


wolf (like me)

by NotAllThoseWhoWander



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 22:27:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/NotAllThoseWhoWander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all his fault, really. He leaves the lab too late, and it's dark and damp outside, and he nearly gets run down by a Toyota speeding out of the Research Facilities parking lot.</p><p>So really, Hermann shouldn't have expected it to be a good night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I.

 

It's all his fault, really. He leaves the lab too late, and it's dark and damp outside, and he nearly gets run down by a Toyota speeding out of the Research Facilities parking lot.

So really, Hermann shouldn't have expected it to be a  _good night_.

He shoves his hands into his pockets, hurries for the sidewalk as the Toyota lurches over a curb and jolts away.

_College students._

_  
_Of course, he's barely 20 and also student at this particular institution, but for God's sake Hermann is a _grad student_ and therefore exponentially more mture. If a little maladjusted. At least he isn't doing Jagerbombs and streaking on the campus quad.

It's rained, and the leaves, usually florid in the daylight, drip, and the pavement gleams. The full, pungent smell of rotting vegetation lingers. There is the feeling of being truly awakened. Hermann hesitates at the edge of the campus border, where the sidewalk peters out and the woods are thicker; there aren't streetlights, and he keeps up with local news and has heard about the mutilated animals on the outskirts of suburbia. An interviewed pysch professor at the college had speculated that the source of the attacks, if not a 'predetory animal' was likely a 'seriously disturbed individual'. Hermann, no dab hand at psychology (and why should he be, when numbers are so much more forgiving, less complex?) is also pretty sure that dicing up household pets is high up on the list of activities that soon-to-be serial killers enjoy. 

But he's got the light of the full moon to illuminate the path, and it's cold enough to merit a shortcut home, and he's okay with taking his chances.

As he walks, Hermann lets himself think about his applied mathematics professor, who last week had asked if Hermann was single and today had told him about a local folk band putting on a concert in a bar in town, and Hermann had distinctly gotten the feeling that Professor Alderson was implying that he and Hermann should go together. Professor Alderson, who has photographs of a wife and kids and family vacations on his desk, who breathes loudly in Hermann's face and always smells like sweat. This isn't something that Hermann  _wants_ to think about, but sometimes thinking about a problem is the best way to solve it, and right now this is his biggest problem.

Because it's not as if he's got friends to vent to. Or to tell, for that matter. 

There's a good group in his theoretical math class, and they usually eat together in the cafeteria, but the few times they've invited Hermann along to go into town, he feels like a burden. Because they're graduate students in their late twenties, and he can't even sit with them at most of the bars in town, and he sure as hell can't buy beers to drink with them in the park. He feels like the little brother who's insisted on tagging along, but drags the group backwards. He had a friend like that as a teenager; one of his best mates had a kid brother who was always lurking around and picking his nose, and none of the boys could tell dirty science jokes in front of him because he'd complain to their parents. 

He could make an effort to hang out with that nice undergrad, Vanessa, more—she's bright and focused and spends a lot of time in the library—but that would require 'bonding' with another person and that's really not Hermann's...thing. 

Alternatively, he could make an effort to avoid Alderson, because frankly the entire thing is making him very, very uncomfortable, and what if Alderson starts to screw with his grades based on Hermann's return (or lack of return) of romantic interest and what if that means that Hermann's going to have to  _tell someone_ about Alderson's advances and the man's poor wife will find out and—

He's slammed from behind, hard.

The sidewalk rushes up to meet him.

The world goes black.

* * *

 _If_ a  _to the power of_ x  _plus_ b  _to the power of_ y  _is equal to_ c  _to the power of_ z _, where _A_ ,  _B_ ,  _C_ ,  _x_ ,  _y_ , and  _z_  are positive integers with  _x_ ,  _y_ ,  _z_  > 2, then  _A_ ,  _B_ , and  _C_  have a common prime factor._

* * *

_Everything is red._

* * *

_I can't see oh god what's on top of me oh god oh bitte, bitte, anything but this_ pain _—_

* * *

 _  
_He comes to with his cheek against the wet sidewalk, and he can't tell if the damp on his face is rainwater or tears. The amount of blood is dizzying at first—holy shit, his shirt is soaked with it and his jacket his torn and Christ, he can't look now because blood makes him a little sick...

So he stumbles another three blocks to a gas station, dodges into the bathroom when a trucker in a baseball cap leaves the door unlocked. Stares at himself in the mirror, double checks that the door's locked. Splashes water onto his face, watches it run down the drain bloody. His hands on the tap are trembling. He locks his jaw so his teeth don't chatter.

It—whatever  _it_ was—has rent a long gash in his jacket and shirt, left a nasty wound on his side. It's gone deep enough to hurt like a  _motherfucker_ , enough to, when Hermann probes the tear with his fingers, send his eyes rolling and his breath stuttering. 

He should go to Health Services. Right away.

As in, right now.

Hermann doesn't move.

He looks everywhere but his reflection and the wound, because it looks like an animal bite too much and he's thinking about stories that his grandmother used to tell in the wintertime, and he knows that he won't be going to Health Services, tonight or any night.

He knows. He knows. He doesn't let his mind settle on a word or definition, lets himself keep it theoretical. 

Theoretical. Unadmitted.

So much easier that way.

* * *

_Mein Gott, this hurts like a son of a bich._

* * *

_  
_He can't walk more than ten feet without stopping to double over, vision swimming, throat sharp with unshed tears. He doesn't let himself cry, because crying connoted weakness and he refuses to cave to bodily weakness.

Fuck. He needs a doctor.

* * *

"Hermann?" She comes to the door in an oversized t-shirt and bare feet. "Hermann, is everything okay?"

He's rocking back and forth on her porch, arms folded up tight and side sticky with blood. Moths flicker around the porch light.

"Actually, no. I have something of a problem." He opens up his jacket. Vanessa gasps, her hands flying to cover her mouth.

"Holy  _shit_!" She grabs his shoulder, urging him inside. "Come in, come in, oh my  _god_ , that's bad, what happened, man, oh my god..."

Hermann keeps telling her 'I'm fine, I'm fine' as she herds him into the kitchen, lips drawn. He's praying that she doesn't wake the rest of the house, because God knows that they both don't need a kitchenful of sorority sisters right now. 

"I think," Hermann begins, but falters and ends up murmuring that he doesn't know. 

"Well, what the hell _happened_?" Vanessa ties her hair back. "Nevermind. Hold that thought."

Then she's dashing away, bare legs a brown blur, going silent up the stairs. Hermann shivers in the kitchen, scared witless. He watches his bloody hands shake on the tabletop, fake woodgrain. His knuckles are white.

Vanessa comes downstairs bearing a medical kit, red plastic, everything very organized. She snaps gloves over her thin fingers and painted nails, lifts his tattered shirt gently.

"Shit, Gottlieb."

"I thought that you could help," he says, foolishly. Vanessa shakes her head. She's biting her lip.

"I'm only pre-med. You need to see a doctor, you need—what...who...?"

"I was mugged." This is the excuse that he has settled upon. Clean, concise. He doubts that a mugger would strike twice in the same place, and at any rate muggers never seem to get caught. 

"Yeah?" She leans in close, probes the wound. Hermann clenches his fists, fighting back a sharp moan. "Did the mugger have a  _dog_ with him, Hermann?"

"I don't..."

"This is an animal bite." 

* * *

Why does his chest freeze up?

He already knows.

* * *

"You promise?" Vanessa stands on the porch, still barefoot, the bloody rubber gloves sealed inside a plastic sandwich bag (biohazard, and all that) and dumped in the trash. Hermann moves stiffly under his jacket, side bandaged into painful oblivion. "Campus police, right away?"

"I  _promise_ ," he vows, and holds up two fingers. "Scout's honor."

Hermann, having immigrated only recently to the United States on a student visa, has never participated in the Boy Scouts.

"Okay." Vanessa stares at him curiously. She does that sometimes, mostly when she thinks he isn't looking. "Okay," she says again. "Yeah, okay."

She makes him promise, also, to call her as soon as he gets home.

Hermann walks quickly, goes out of his way to keep under the streetlights. It's a blessedly short venture home, to the white house on University Avenue. There are dozens of houses like this, a sleep-deprived band of students paying low rent for a single room close to the college, and with no one in the place over the age of twenty-five and plenty of booze in the fridge, it's a pretty sweet deal for most kids.

Hermann lets himself in through the back door, stepping over a tangle of skateboards and winter jackets. There's an empty aquarium in the hall outside his room, and next door Eli is talking loudly in his sleep. Something about cell cycles, but Hermann's leg hurts like hell, and his side is on fire, and he's too tired and scared to do anything but run his toothbrush around his mouth and take a few asprin, and then he falls asleep on top of his blankets, still wearing his shoes and jeans and jacket.

* * *

Vanessa is glad that he told the campus police, gave a crime report. Wonders aloud why the local newspaper didn't run anything about the violent attack. She's happy to know that Hermann saw a doctor—a  _real_ doctor, she says, and flashes him a bright grin, not a not-even-med-student—and is taking pain medication and antibiotics.

What she doesn't know—and never  _will_ know, if Hermann can help it—is that he hasn't properly slept in a week and a half, stays up until the small hours because his mind is humming and even in the dark every feature of his room is weirdly illuminated and somehow it just feels  _right_ , and he keeps doing web searches that lead him to dark corners of the internet where every page is either written by a basement-dweller or a fetish group. That his focus is suddenly very, very sharp and that he can smell perfume on a girl across the cafeteria, even over the rank odor of suspicious meat products. That there's something wrong and he doesn't know what it is but he kind of likes it and oh, yeah, it's also pretty terrifying.

"No, everything's fine." He touches her shoulder, because that's what friends do. "Everything is fine."

* * *

**ONE MONTH LATER**

**  
**II.

"You sure? It's gonna be pretty great." Eli leans in the doorway, wearing basketball shorts and a baggy sweatshirt. A jockstrap dangles from his hand. "Lots of chicks. Drunk chicks."

Hermann is determined not to appear repusled. "No, thank you." His mother always taught him to say  _thank you_ , even if the proposal was awful. "I'm working on a paper for—"

"Hey, it's fine, man." Eli shrugs. "Just trying to be friendly."

It's not the first time that Eli has invited Hermann along to one of his parties; Hermann took him up on the offer once, after a week of pestering, and quickly found that he was something of a curiosity to Eli's 'crew'. After several hours of thrusting Solo cups full of warm beer into his hands and pushing him in the direction of drunk, dancing girls, Eli's friends had decided that Hermann just wasn't very good fun. Isn't very good fun.

Eli keeps asking, and Hermann keeps declining. It's become something of a tradition.

"Well, I'll leave you to...whatever it is you're working on." Eli casts a disdainful glance around the tidy room, leaves the door open. Hermann goes back to his paper (which at this point is mostly mindless bullshit). Pretends that he can't hear every movement Eli is making next door, every breath the guy takes.

Shit.

* * *

He gets to the lab at eight, finds it mostly empty. Chloe, one of the grad students, is rocking out silently to her iPod, jumps when Hermann comes through the door.

"Holyshitdude!" She snatches out her earphones. "Wow, didn't hear you come in."

"Sorry." He takes off his jacket. "I'm just here to work on the dimensional—"

"Okay, okay, sure." Chloe is nodding, sliding her arms into her jacket sleeves. "Look, I was just running out..." and then, "You okay, Gottlieb?"

"I am fairly certain...?"

"Your nose is bleeding, is all. You don't look so good, man."

She suggests that he take the night off, which they both know Hermann won't do, and as soon as she's through the door he dashes to the bathroom and leans over the sink. 

 _Dialated pupils? Am I_ high _? No. No. Alright. Inhale. Exhale. Pupils, yes. Check. Bleeding nose...oh, godwhatwasthatholyshitohgodthathurtohgodlike_

* * *

 _  
_He doesn't remember running outside but there's wet grass under his hands and the smell of exhaust and stars overhead and the moon, huge and full, swaying over trees like skeletons...

* * *

Ohgodithurtssomuchohgodohgodpleasewhyoh

no anything to make this stop run run no go faster go

fuck

ohgodtearingyouapart tearing tearing you apart from the inside everything red everything blood the moon the moon huge and leering black trees like burnt-up matches your father used to smoke do you remember that yes remember make yourself force yourself  _force yourself you are fine you are fine you are human_

* * *

_OH GOD_

* * *

He's on the ground.

Damp grass, dead leaves.

The air: cool. Slight breeze, patchy clouds.

Full moon. 

Body like it's been just  _torn apart_ , every breath so painful it makes his eyes tear up.

Just...inhale, exhale. Think. No—no, don't think. Don't think. If you have to think, think about something else.

* * *

_No three positive integers a,b, and c can satisfy the equation a n + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two._

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: SEXUAL ABUSE IS MENTIONED IN THIS CHAPTER!!!!!!
> 
> I'm putting this warning now, because this work WILL CONTAIN THEMES OF SEXUAL ASSULT AND ABUSE. For now, the section is in italics, so you can skip it. It's not extremely important to the story so if you don't want to read it you don't have to. Also throwing a trigger warning for homophobic slurs (only one in this chapter but there will be more). Stay cool, friends.

 

III.

 

_...the 'transformation', occuring on the eve of the full moon, generally accepted as extraordinarily painful; indeed, too much of a burden for the human body to bear, but acceptable for the wolf's..._

_  
_"Can I help you?"

Hermann jumps, flinches. He nearly drops the book ( _A History of the Supernatural_ , mostly bullshit but he doesn't expect any better). The student worker folds her arms, raking him up and down with a sharp gaze.

"Uh, it's just that we're about to close for the day."

"It's only noon. I was under the impression that the library..."

"It's Sunday." 

"Right." Hermann crams the book back onto the shelf. A load of b.s., really. "My apologies."

"Yeah, it's fine." She watches him critically, then follows him to the sliding glass doors. Hermann goes out into the cold, breakable autumn sunlight, bitter and limping. His leg has been acting up lately, and the...incident...only served to intensify the pain multifold.

In pain and beyond irritable, he takes shelter in the local used bookstore—an elclectic place only a couple blocks from the college. The shopkeeper, a bearded old guy wearing a half-dozen wooded necklaces, tries to sell him a self-published book about nirvana when Hermann asks for the 'supernatural' section.

"You'll discover things about yourself you  _never_ could've imagined on this plane. Really."

Hermann stiffens. "I think I've done more than enough discovering, thank you."

The shopkeeper mumbles under his breath, waving Hermann to a dim, smoky corner of the narrow store. The shelves don't appear to be organized in any sort of actual  _pattern_ , so Hermann sifts around a little, searching. He's dug up a likely-looking volume ( _American Paranormal: Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, and More_ ) when someone materializes at his side. _  
_

"Hey—I've seen you around campus. What're you doing here?"

A distinctly high-pitched voice, almost grating. Hermann closes the book and tries to reshelve it too quickly.

" _American Para_...what're you  _reading_ , man? Aren't you, like, a math major or something?"

Hermann turns to survey the speaker. Short, scrawny, with messy dark hair and those god-awful hipster glasses. Tight jeans, frayed t-shirt, denim jacket.

Yes, he's _definitely_ seen this kid before.

"I am a graduate student at the university." He bites back a _what are you, a high-school senior?_ and settles instead for a cutting glare. The kid doesn't seem to notice. His eyes are weirdly bright.

"That's pretty crazy, man—because, like, I figured you'd be all buttoned-up and? I don't know, not into this kind of thing? Like, vampires, and shit. I mean, maybe you're not...?"

"I'm not." Hermann turns, tries to inch past the kid without shoving him out of the way. The shelves are very close together, and he finds himself pressed up to the youth, and oh, Jesus, the kid's wearing way too much cologne and also smells like mints and is  _breathing_ in Hermann's direction and—ohnowhat'shedoing yes, definitely just made a very  _pelvic-thrust-y_ motion in Hermann's direction. "Excuse me."

"Well, I think it's really cool." 

"Wonderful." Hermann shoulders his way through the shop's duty door, bell jangling behind him. The sidewalk is largely deserted. A pickup truck lurches past, and the air smells like beginnings.

"Hey, man—what's your name? And, like, major? Or whatever?"

Hermann wheels, pushing a sigh through pursed lips. "Hermann Gottlieb. Theoretical Mathematics."

The kid grins, really putting his whole face into it. "Awesome, dude." A pause, and then, "Newt Geiszler. Comparative biology."

"You're not serious." Hermann scoffs. 

"Am too." The kid pushes his skinny chest out, like he's itching for a fight. "I'm very serious, in fact. Very serious. Why? You don't think I can...like, handle that? Because I graduated _high school_ at fifteen, okay?"

Hermann almost laughs. There's very little actual humor in the situation, but he's got plenty of questions.

  * what the hell kind of name is 'Newt'?
  * is this kid a genius?
  * is he following me?
  * what does he want?
  * if i tell him to leave, will he leave?



"What are you doing?" Hermann says, because Newt is still trailing after him.

"I want—I just wanted to talk to you." Newt shrugs. "Fine. It's cool. I just figured...two great minds, and all that. You know. Think alike, or whatever."

Hermann heaves another sigh, louder this time. 

The word 'no' is heavy on his tongue. He looks at Newt. Newt looks at him.

Fine, he says. Fine.

* * *

"I can't believe you've never been here!" Newt reaches across the waxy tabletop, helping himself to more of Hermann's untouched fries. "This is like, my favorite place in town. Basically my second home."

"This is a bar," Hermann says. "I'm not entirely sure that you're even allowed to be  _in here_ , legally."

"Whatever." Newt squints. "I know the owner, he's cool."

"I refuse to become entangled with your disregard for the law."

Newt rolls his eyes. Hermann wonders if he combs his hair like that, on purpose, or if it's naturally so...messy. Like Newt has just run his fingers through it, like someone else has...

"Anyways, I should be returning to the research facility. I have work to do."

"On a  _Sunday_?"

"Research stops for no man," Hermann says, which he thinks is pretty witty but Newt doesn't seem to understand. So Hermann shifts the kid's Coke can across the table, sweeping up some leftover satl from the fries. College students are drinking around them, a few locals. "I am sorry."

"Wait, dude. Like, are you German?"

Hermann gives Newt a withering glance. "Yes."

"Jah? Mich auch." 

 _Wonderful_. Hermann, increasingly uncomfortable, stands up, leaves a few dollar bills under the salt shaker.

"So, where in Germany?" Newt scrambles after him, pulling on that ridiculous jacket.

"A small town. You've never heard of it."

"Tell me! I probably have!"

"Garmisch-Partenkirchen."

"You're right. Never heard of it."

"Excellent. I am very glad that we've cleared  _that_ up." Hermann tries to outstride Newt, but the kid, for all his short stature, is faster than he looks. 

"Dude, wait!" 

"No."

"I'm from Berlin, dude, we can talk about—about—about Germany, or..."

" _No_."

He's almost to the edge of the woods, keeps walking faster. A few joggers sprint past, girls in tight neon pants. Before the orange trees close around him, Hermann turns back to see Newt standing on the sidewalk, slump-shouldered, alone.

* * *

 

"So." Alderson folds his arms, leaning back in his chair. "How's the paper coming?"

"Fine." Hermann shifts in the wooden chair before Alderson's untidy desk. The air in the room is choking him, his shirt collar is too tight, why did he wear this ugly awful sweatervest, god, he can barely breathe...

"Good. Good." Alderson smies. His front teeth are crooked. "You're...exceptionally bright, Hermann. I'm sure that you've been told before."

"Yes."

"Not so humble, though."

"I was not aware that humility and recognition of one's abilities were mutually exclusive."

Alderson stares at him funnily. "Right."

"So." Hermann twists his hands in his lap. "Have we discussed my paper thoroughly enough, Professor?"

"You know." Alderson stands up, stretches. Hermann looks away. On the campus quad below the window, a group of younger students are kicking around leaves. In bulky jackets, they look like schoolkids. Alderson steps closer. "You know, I don't think we have, Hermann. I don't think we have."

And then his palms are on Hermann's shoulders, and one hand is moving to Hermann's chest, he's touching him and Hermann is writhing away, horrified. 

"Stop," he says, and louder. "Stop!'

Alderson steps backwards. "Only trying to get you to relax a little, kid. Christ."

"Don't..." Hermann stands up, gathering his papers. He can feel the hot pulse under his skin; under his wrists and at the back of his throat. Taste of blood already sharp and ironic on his tongue. "Don't touch me."

"Hermann." Alderson reaches for Hermann's shoulder, grabs it too hard. "Hermann, you're being ridiculous. Whatever you're... _imagining_...is totally inappropriate and unprofessional." 

"Please let go," Hermann says, and all the rage and fight is gone in an eyeblink, and he's fumbling his way through the door with his papers held up tight against his chest.

* * *

_"Hermann." His tutor, young and bearded, wearing a starched shirt and eyeglasses. "Focus, please, Hermann."_

_Hermann put his pencil down. "Es tut mir leid."_

_"Why do you not pay better attention?" Mr. Halder sighed, very quietly. "Your parents pay good money for me to teach you. It is this or the public schools again."_

_"No." Hermann spoke too quickly. "I've finished my requirements."_

_"Well, then, you will mind me when I say to pay attention."_

_"Jah."_

_"Good." Mr. Halder handed Hermann the pencil. "The equations again, Hermann."_

_And Hermann didn't feel the hand on his thigh under the table until it was too late, until Mr. Halder's palms were_ on him  _and the blush was superheating his cheeks, but at fifteen what is there to say? He ground the tip of the pencil into the paper. Yes, Mr. Halder was handsome, and young, and Hermann had often wondered what would happen should he close the distance between them, but that was stupid and he didn't like men, he didn't like—_

_"You're hard," Mr. Halder said, and rubbed, and Hermann writhed under the table and focused very, very hard on his equations, just finish this graph, see it in your head, all the lines, everything linear, clear, everything precise, everything—_

_"Stop, bitte."_

_"Keep going," Mr. Halder said, palm going faster, Hermann dug the pencil into the paper hard enough to tear it, a thin tear down the center of the graph and his body shook as he came, face hot with shame. Mr. Halder took his hand away quickly. "Stand up."_

_Hermann stood. Mr. Halder made a point to stare at the wetness on the front of Hermann's pants._

_"Go clean yourself up."_

_Hermann did so. He locked himself in the bathroom and scrubbed until it burned. He would not look at himself in the mirror._

* * *

He can't sleep.

First the room is too hot, and then too cold, and then Eli is playing heavy metal music too loudly and the walls are far, far too thin. Restless, Hermann tries counting to two hundred and infinity, respectively, and then knocking on Eli's door and asking him to please consider turning the music down a little (a muffled, 'sure, man', and no change in volume whatsoever). Then he lies down on top of his blankets and tries very, very hard not to think about last week.

He fails, of course. Feels the course damp ground under his back, cold air pressing around his bare torso. He'd come to naked, on dirt, blood under his fingernails. 

Had climbed to his feet, scared out of his  _mind_ , on the verge of tears but dammit, Gottliebs do  _not_ cry, and Hermann isn't about to break that tradition. Tried to cover himself, pitifully, but he had been so, so alone anyways. Didn't make himself look down, because he'd seen the scratches out of the corner of his eye and didn't want to see them again. The cold air had made his cuts burn something awful, but he'd ignored that because you have got to learn to  _comparmentalize, Hermann._

Making it to the edge of the woods, familiar ground, seeing lights in the lab's windows. Holding the tatters of a sweater up to his chest, thank god his pants were still wearable (a loose term, considering the attractive slit up the thigh). He'd gone in quietly, considered using the emergency showers to bathe. Instead, he'd dressed shakily in the spare clothes he kept in his lab locker, limped home with his leg on  _fire_. 

He hadn't been scared, though. He remembers that. No fear in the chill dark, dead leaves on damp ground. No fear in his chest, pit of his stomach, throat. He'd been invincible, he'd been...

He'd been something.

Maybe that was more frightening that a fear of the dark ever could be.

* * *

 _You're human_ , he tells himself over the mirror, as he did the morning after. Eli had been asleep, as had the rest of the house, so Hermann had let himself in, looked at the clock (nearly four in the morning), lain awake for hours trying to piece together some kind of  _logic_ , and failing. 

So he leans close over the mirror and tells himself that he is human, and watches his pupils dialate in the midnight dimness. Eli's shitty music shakes the walls. 

 _You're human_.

Newt's freckled cheeks, that smirking grin, like he'd—

_You're human._

_  
_—known.

_You're human you're human you're—_

* * *

Vanessa asks him to go to a poetry reading in town. It's Friday night, so Hermann agrees. Mostly, he doesn't have another solid excuse. 

He wears a bowtie and tweed jacket and sits near the front with Vanessa, even though the student poets make him uncomfortable, with their raw emotion and tangled-up words and quick tongue. Wonders if people think that he is Vanessa's boyfriend. She's radiant in a long skirt, woolen scarf. 

The poetry isn't bad, but it's not quite  _good_ , either. Afterwards, Vanessa goes to a bar with some of the Lit majors, and Hermann makes his excuses. They frighten him, these emotional youth, with their writer's thin fingers and their clever references. They frighten him and he's ashamed of that. Still, the way they  _look_ at people—it's as if he is made transparent.

The library is open until midnight, so he heads in that direction. The town's main drag is sleepy, the only buildings illuminated are the bar, the Starlite All-Nite Diner, a handful of stores. He's walking behind a little band of ice-cream eating children when someone calls,

"Yo, Hermann!" 

_Oh. No._

_  
_He doesn't turn around, but the children are taking up the entire stretch of sidewalk and he tries to move one out of the way without looking like he's assaulting them.

"'Scuse me, 'scuse me," Hermann mutters, reaching for the little girl's shoulders. She turns, pigtails swinging. They all stare at him.

"Ha, ha, dude, are you trying to run away or something?" Newt slows to a jog, then a walk. He falls into stride beside Hermann. "What a coincidence—I didn't think you guys actually left the campus."

"I'm sorry—who's  _we_?"

"You know. Math majors."

"Oh, my God." Hermann swerves off the sidewalk, tracking through the park. Newt follows, kicking through heaps of fallen leaves. When Hermann inhales, the cold makes his nose sting. "Please leave."

"What?" Newt stops walking, like a kicked puppy. Pouts until Hermann stops, too, and turns around. God, he yearns for the lab now, for quiet and only the background hum of machines that never stop running, not even in the dead of night. 

"May I ask why you insist on following me, Mr. Geiszler?"

"You remembered." Newt puts his hands in his pockets. When Hermann only rolls his eyes, he mutters something under his breath.

"What was that?"

"I said, I think you're interesting."

Hermann is silent for a moment. Swallows. Stares at Newt, who is sporting a leather jacket resplendent with shoulder-spikes. Wonders if the kid's been, say, huffing glue or something. 

 _Interesting_.

A group of teenagers carouse past, laughing and whooping. Hermann sees the way Newt looks at them—quick, a sideways glance and then away. He wonders why Newt's out alone, wandering the town on a cool night.

It's not difficult to extrapolate. 

"Come on, then," he says, and starts walking.

* * *

"Just...interesting." Newt blushes, stares into his cup of coffee. They've taken up residence in a sticky plastic booth in the Starlite All-Nite Diner, where it's still pretty cold but smells like coffee. "I don't know, it's like, you're smart and I got interested when I saw you around campus because, like, you dress like my grandfather? But, in a good way? Like, you pull it off, dude."

Hermann stires sugar into his coffee, increasingly uncomfortable with the implication of _interested_.

"Anyways, when I saw you reading that book about supernatural stuff I just got really interested, I dunno, maybe that's..."

 _And there it is_.

"...weird, but I think that stuff's pretty cool." Newt tilts his head back, downing half his mug in a single swallow. His glasses lenses are smudged. "So, why are you interested in that stuff?"

Hermann swallows. He feels the corners of his lips pull into a grimace. The truth is huge and possible and garish, and on the tip of his tongue.

"I'm not."

"Huh?" Newt lowers his cup. "Oh."

"I'm not—I was merely researching for a...paper. Predicting isolated events. Heavy stuff. Not interesting, I'm afraid."

Newt nods. "Oh, yeah. Sure. Right. I mean, I just figured...not that you...I don't know, I've always thought that kind of stuff was cool. The idea of, like, vampires and," he pauses, like he's testing waters. "Werewolves, and stuff."

Hermann almost chokes. He catches himself, but barely, and  _dammit_ , Newt saw that, the kid is definitely some kind of genius, there's no way he'll miss that, no way he won't pick up on  _something_.

"So, you are a student at the university," Hermann says, far too quickly.

"Yeah. Third year."

"I've barely seen you around campus."

Newt laughs nervously. "I spend—spent—a lot of time alone. Took some getting used to, being fifteen and going to college."

"Naturally."

"I mean, like, I'm not  _that weird_ , I'm not some  _freak_. I just like being—I mean, not  _like_ , I'm just  _okay with_ being alone, so my roommates kind of. Uh. Well, yeah, they kind of pushed me around a little, they're not—you know, science people. But I switched into a different room and now I've got this weird biomedical engineering guy who spends all his time playing World of Warcraft and eating Spam. He's actually kind of gross, but, like we don't really talk? So, it's okay." He sucks in a deep breath. "Sorry I'm talking a lot. I tend to—uh, I mean, you know, talk when I'm nervous. Not that I'm nervous right now. Excited, too. I talk a lot when I get excited."

"Fifteen is young." Hermann is definitely  _not_ thinking about how awkward Newt must have been three years ago. 

"I guess." Newt looks down at his hands and laughs again, a humorless laugh. Looks up. Their eyes meet. "Hey, also, why is your accent, like, so strong?"

"I immigrated here last year. Student visa. My accent was terribly strong then. I've improved."

"Guess I dodged that one." 

"What do you mean?"

"My accent. I was born in Berlin, you know."

"I barely hear anything." There really isn't anything to  _hear_ at all; Newt sounds like a run of the mill American punk. Hermann thinks it's—sweet?

Not sweet. Not sweet, nothing's  _sweet_ about this, just uncomfortable and weird and  _not sweet_.

"Well, I kind of—you know, when I was a kid I really—they thought it was stupid, they called me...well, I mean, it doesn't matter, so..." Newt trails away, looking at his hands, smiling sort of sideways. Hermann feels a surprising flash of pity for the kid. "That was a while ago, so."

"I understand," Hermann says, though he doesn't. That's just one of the things that you're supposed to say: I understand.

Even when you don't. Even when you can't.

* * *

The kids come for Newt at eleven o'clock, when they're both on their third cup of coffee and Newt is talking so fast Hermann can barely keep up. 

And Newt is really starting to irk him.

Exponentially.

"Like, I always thought that math majors were, like shut-ins, you know what I mean. Let's face it, dude, math isn't really something—I mean, it's fine, whatever, doesn't do it for me but hey, it's obviously like the name of your game but seriously  _majoring_ in math I just think that would make you totally crazy after a while don't you think so I definitely think it would staring at numbers all day must make you fucking insane or something right?"

"Something like that, I imagine." Hermann sighs loudly. Newt doesn't seem to notice.

"Anyways, then I met all these math majors one night and they got  _so bitchy_ as soon as we started talking about school and like, I was fifteen, right, just out of high school and they were like in their twenties at least and they thought they were better than me at comparative biology and I was just like uh, no, man, there are a fuckton of things that I'm really really bad at like rollerskating that's definitely one but comparative biology isn't one of them like I knew that's what I wanted to study I'd already declared a major but you know these fuckers were like—"

He breaks off (blessed silence) as a band of college students closes in around their booth.

"What's up, guys?"

"Hey." A greasy-looking character slides in next to Newt. "This your boyfriend, Gays-ler?"

"Ha, ha,  _no_ ," Newt says, loudly. "We just, like, met, actually, it's..."

"Cool. So, we need you to hook us up tonight."

"Oh. Sure. I was just..."

"Like, now." The kids are all standing there, staring at either Newt or Hermann. They look like they carry knives. More than one is sporting a mullet. 

"Guys, I was kind of..."

"Get up. Don't be a fag."

Newt swallows visibly. He stands up. The greasy kid throws an arm around Newt's shoulder. Newt half-turns, flashes Hermann a guilty, apologetic smile. 

"See you around, Gottlieb."

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

IV.

 

They're walking to the cafeteria when, seemingly out of  _nowhere_ , Vanessa says,

"You know, they say that the full moon makes people crazy."

Hermann flinches, chokes on a lungful of frigid air. Straightens, prays that Vanessa hasn't noticed.

"Superstition is folly, really."

"I don't know." She looks up at the sky, moon a yellow semicircle above the trees. It's almost Halloween, and the air smells like promise. "I just don't know."

"Well, I don't believe in any of that nonsense." Hermann tries to speak with great assurance. Hide the waver in your voice, hide your secret fear, hide the smell of blood, your own, on your ribcage and the ache the next morning when you feel like you've turned yourself inside out and probably have. Hide the beast, Hermann. "My grandmother used to taunt me with fairytales like that—stories about wolves and little girls in cloaks. As I grew older, I realized that I could merely chose not to listen. The stories are follies that people make up explain away mystery, as the Greeks explained their lightning storms and tempests."

"Zeus and Poseidon," Vanessa agrees, somewhat gloomily. She's been distinctly pouty since Chuck, the rougish, handsome boy from her human biology class, started seeing another girl. "Tempests in teapots, you know."

Hermann, still confused by American idioms, does not know. But he agrees with her anyways, and not-so-deftly changes the subject as they enter the bright, noisy cafeteria. 

It's so much easier to try to forget; that much he does know.

* * *

"Frankly, I'm a little worried."

"About what?" Hermann says, adding a dilatory  _sir_. Alderson looks at Hermann for a few good, long moments. Suddenly the lecture hall—moments ago huge and loud—feels airtight. 

"Your performance, actually. I believe that you might benefit from—"

 _Don't even_ think  _of saying it, don't even—_

 _  
_"—outside attention."

"I hope that you are not suggesting that I am performing poorly," Hermann snaps. Feels his accent mangle the words, make every letter knife-sharp. It comes out stronger when he's angry. German is a pretty threatening language, so he's actually pretty okay with that. "I am one of the top students in the class, and the youngest by a number of years. In fact, I have been performing well above my age level in theoretical mathematics for the past decade."

Alderson reaches for Hermann's arm, grabs it tightly, and Hermann tries to pull away but can't.

"You want your fucking degree, kid?"

"Don't touch me!"

"I said,  _you want your fucking degree_?" Alderson is snarling now, face close to Hermann's, and Hermann nods mutely. Alderson releases him quickly, steps away. "I'm sorry, Hermann. I overreacted. Remember, I only have your best interests in mind."

"I understand." Hermann stares at the floor. He's itching to strike Alderson, throw a punch. Knows that he wouldn't get far with that method, because frankly he's a pretty shitty fighter. 

"Come by my office tomorrow afternoon. We'll work something out."

Before Alderson can remind him about his best interests again, Hermann flees the lecture hall. All those empty seats are just  _staring_ at him. Watching. 

The morning is cool and bright, but sunlight feels garish and Hermann's head is pounding as he heads for the library. He needs to bury himself in work for a while. Think about everything but himself.

"Hey, Hermann! Hey!"

 _No. This is—no_.

Hermann ignores the voice—painfully familiar, high-pitched and scratchy—and walks faster. But for all his shortness Newt catches up, yet again, and in the weeks since Hermann's seen him has let something barely resembling a beard grow in. 

"Wow, it's been so long since we've seen each other—crazy, considering we both live so close to campus, right? Well, I mean, like, I live in the dorms and you live—where  _do_ you live? Like, nearby, or—?"

Hermann wheels, words high and tight in his throat.

"You are absolutely  _insufferable_ —I cannot  _begin_ to comprehend why you insist on initiating conversation! Haven't I made myself clear?"

"What?" Newt says, and his eyes are wide behind those stupid hipster eyeglasses. "What are you...?"

"I am not your  _friend_ , Newt." 

And he leaves Newt there, alone in the middle of the quad, autumn leaves spiraling brilliant and desperate around him.

* * *

_"I can't explain. He just doesn't help me learn."_

_"Hermann." His mother sighed, quietly, like Hermann was putting her through a great trial. Her hands were red from working at the laundry. She smelled like soap and bleach. "Hermann, please."_

_Later, when he was supposed to be asleep, he heard his parents arguing through their bedroom door; thin apartment walls don't allow for secrets._

_  
_Halder is the least expensive, _his father said, loudly, not bothering to keep his voice down._ The others are ridiculous, Halder's a university student, it's that or the public schools.

We can't send him back there, Lars. We just can't. 

_And even then, Hermann knew. That night he dreamed about Marco, the handsome boy who had gone through public school with him, dreamed about kissing Marco and then doing other things, and woke rock-hard under his blankets. Guilty and full of rage, he'd ignored the painful heat until he fell back into a restless sleep._

_Mr. Halder returned the day after next, when Hermann's parents were at work. As busses rattled past on the street below their flat, Mr. Halder instruced Hermann in the art of probability. It was easy enough work, equations that Hermann could reason through in his sleep. When Mr. Halder touched him, he didn't push his hand away. Under the table, Mr. Halder's hand moved faster and faster, and Hermann was hot with anger and also guilt, came hard, writhing into the unfamiliar hand with the word 'stop' on his lips._

_"You like that, jah?" Mr. Halder said. Hermann looked away. "Don't be like that, Hermann. This isn't something to be ashamed of. This is good for you. I see boys like you, I worry. You're all so...repressed. You need this."_

_And when Mr. Halder had taken Hermann's hand and pressed it against his own cock, and told Hermann what to do, Hermann had done it without question._

_Afterwards, when Mr. Halder shut the apartment door, Hermann went to the bathroom and scrubbed his right palm until it was scarlet and burning. The hot water scalded his skin, but he kept going. He didn't stop until tears came to his eyes, and a key fumbled in the front door, and his mother's voice called out: Hermann, I'm home._

* * *

_  
_He keeps track of the moon's waxing on his desk calander. The cycle's zenith comes too soon; this time, Hermann's prepared. He goes down to the lab's sublevel, a concrete bunker full of old speciman tanks and unused deep-freezers, and lets the pain take over. The last thing he remembers before blacking out is the sound of his own screams.

There's sunlight when he wakes up, filtering through a ground-level window. Blood on the floor. Hermann pulls on the clothing he's stashed in one of the abandoned freezers (thank god he didn't get through the door and shred it), limps home to take a shower. Under the hot water, he lets himself examine his own wounds: long claw marks up his sides, shoulders, back, bite marks on his arm. He watches the water run rust-colored down the drain, feels like he's run very hard into a brick wall. 

The next day, when Alderson holds their first 'extra help' session, and touches Hermann's shoulder too many times, and says that this is really working out, this is going to really help Hermann, isn't it?, Hermann is too exhausted and scared to disagree, or to fight back. He lets Alderson stroke his shoulder, and keeps quiet, and leaves with his papers all marked up in red in his backpack.

He sees Newt once around campus, being pushed around by a group of students outside the Student Union. Eli is among them. They surround Newt, pushing at him like they're being friendly but it's obvious that they're not. Hermann changes his route, goes the long way to the library.

Even from a distance, Newt had looked painfully young.

* * *

 "You're improving." Alderson looks out the window, refusing to make eye contact with Hermann. Leaves are all scarlet, or on the ground, and every day the air is cooler. "You don't go out on Halloween, do you?"

"No," Hermann says, stiffly. A rough draft of his latest paper lies unedited between them. "Not usually."

"Good. Kids on this campus, they get up to all kinds of shit on Halloween. Dicking around, drinking. People make mistakes when they're drunk. But you're too good for that, Hermann. You're a good kid."

Hermann swallows. He catches his reflection in the window; pallid, scared. He hates himself for looking like that, for looking so scared. 

"Anyways." Alderson turns to survey Hermann. "I never see you with any girls."

"Professor, I'm going to be late to—"

"Most of these guys, I see them with girls. Why are you never hanging around with any girls, Hermann?"

"—a class, a lecture, I've got—"

"Hey. Hey." Alderson stands up. Hermann follows suit, grabs his paper and crams it into his folder. Alderson catches him by the door, touches Hermann's cheek. "You're doing good, Hermann."

And Hermann won't correct his grammar because he's already halfway down the hall, moving quickly away from rage and shame. He goes home, because he doesn't have any classes today, and locks himself in his room. 

Online lycanthropy forums proove either fraudulent or helpful, but most of the time he can't tell if people are lying about transforming or bullshitting or lurking around for a laugh or some sick twisted pleasure. 

They're distracting, though, and that's the main thing.

* * *

A late-autumn downpour catches him the evening before Halloween, and Hermann seeks shelter in the Starlite All-Nite Diner, with a cup of coffee and his textbooks. 

* * *

_for any two real numbers α and β,_

     __

_where  is here the distance to the nearest integer._

* * *

 

 _  
_"Uh." The soft, awkward clearing of someone clearing their throat. "Hey. Um. Hermann."

Hermann refuses to divert his gaze from his textbook.

"Um. I probably should just, like, leave? Right now, probably, because—well, okay, yeah, but I'm not going to because I really need to, uh. I need to talk to you. About. Um. So last week—I think it was last week, it was probably last week, yeah—when I saw you on campus and then you said that whole thing about—uh, not being my friend and all that. Um. Not that I'm some oversensitive immature guy who needs, like,  _friends_ , but, uh, I just—you know—about me being insufferable and all that..." Newt trails off for a moment, then plunges ahead. "Look, man, I want to—I think you're really interesting and I know you think that I'm annoying and I'm kind of getting the feeling that you might hit me with that textbook, yeah, you're really looking at me like you're about to hit me with that textbook so maybe I should justleaveIcoulddothatifyouwantmeto—"

Hermann says, "Sit down."

Newt sits.

They face each other in the plastic booth, Newt's gaze bright and taut. 

Rain is falling hard outside, and suddenly the world seems very small, and Newt's damp hair has fallen across his forehead and it would be very easy to brush it away, carefully, and the kid's freckles are bright on his cheeks and god, is he seriously trying to grow a  _beard_? But in this light he looks older, and at the same time very young and stricken down by fate, or life, or whatever it is young people find themselves slapped around by.

Hermann swallows, because his gaze has definitely found Newt's mouth and the way his lips twist into a sort-of-ironic half-smile.

"So." He tips creamer into his coffee. "What's Newt short for, anyways?"

* * *

 "...but I'm gonna have my first doctorate by the time I'm twenty-three." Newt leans back and folds his arms. 

"You are unusually motivated." Hermann watches Newt, feeling a familiar disdain. He thinks of Newt as much younger, but the boy is only a little more than a year Hermann's junior. "For a boy of your age."

"Uh, I'm, like, a year younger than you, dude." Newt flicks his tongue around a straw. Hermann is fairly certain that the implication  _and probably smarter_ is lingering there somewhere.

"I hardly see the importance of age, Newton."

"No.  _No_. I did _not_ tell you my given name so you could  _call_ me that. No way. No way." Newt shakes his head vehemently, drinks more Coke. "Um, only my mom calls me Newton, and that's, like, when she's pissed off. So."

"Fine."

"Good. Yeah."

"Yes."

"So."

"Yes?"

"No. I just." Newt seems suddenly distracted by something in the parking lot outside, but in the reflection of the rain-streaked window Hermann sees the twist to his face. "Uh. When you saw those guys—um, Eli Johnson, and those—you know. Those guys."

"I saw them surrounding you, yes."

"It's just—I mean, even from far away I could see the way you looked at me. That's kind of why I. Uh. Came in here when I saw you through the window. I just. I could tell, from the way you were staring at me that day, you must've thought—I don't know, maybe it looked like..."

"I know what it's like to be unpopular on campus."

"I'm not unpopular," Newt says, quickly, like a reflex. 

Hermann stares at him. "You must be joking."

"I'm  _not_. People—people like me. They like me."

"Newton, people like  _us_ will always be perceived as—"

"There are no people like  _us_!" Newt says, too loudly. The few locals in the diner turn and stare. "There are no people like  _us_ ," he snaps, lowering his voice. "People like  _you_ , maybe, but not like us."

"Newton, surely you must see..."

"I see you alone, or in that professor's office—are you two fucking, or something?"

Hermann stands up, going rigid with fury. 

"Is that why you never talk to me? Is that why you're too  _good_ for everyone? Why you haven't got any friends?"

Hermann isn't sure what Newt's talking about—Alderson, or him, or both or neither. He doesn't care. It's drizzling outside but he slams his way through the door, wind knifing easily through his jacket. Newt follows him down the wooden steps, combat boots loud and clunky.

"Wait, dude! Wait, Hermann!"

Hermann snarls some crude remark—in German, of course, knowing full-well that Newt will understand—and quickens his pace up the sidewalk. Weak moonlight gilds all the slick pavement.

"Come back!" Newt shouts, and then, when Hermann doesn't turn around, " _I know what you are_!"

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

V.

 

"I know what you are!"

* * *

Hermann stops dead in his tracks. 

He turns slowly, breathing hard.

"What?"

"I said," Newt raises his voice. "I know what you are."

"And how," Hermann breathes, and maybe Newt's reading his lips because the bastard is grinning sideways like a fucking idiot, "would you  _possibly_ know that?"

"They don't let fifteen year-olds into this school without some serious creds." Newt takes his time striding closer, and Hermann is acutely aware of the shift of Newt's body, the way he walks, way he places his feet. There's something distinctly...

 _Canine_.

"Not you, too."

Newt flicks his gaze upwards. "Pity it's not full."

"I disagree." And then,  _fuck_ , Hermann realizes that he's confessed everything, everything in a stupid moment of blind assumption. He's prowled the online forums enough to know those...types. Who's to say that Newt isn't some—some pervert with a fetish? _  
_

"You look afraid." Newt draws up beside Hermann. "Are you scared?"

"No," Hermann snaps. "I don't know what you're talking about. In fact, I think that we are quite done here." He can barely look at the kid, remembers Newt's face when he'd said Alderson's name.

"But..."

"No." Hermann turns on his heels and strides away, grateful for his long (ish?) legs. 

He doesn't expect Newt to follow him, he doesn't expect the warm hand on his shoulder; he  _certainly_ doesn't expect the jolt that rattles him, feels like a shock through a live wire. 

"Please," Newt says, and suddenly he doesn't sound so damn  _annoying_. "Don't go."

* * *

"It wasn't my fault," Hermann says, for the fourth time. "It was dark. It wasn't..."

"I know."

They're sitting on the plastic jungle gym at the local park, feet dangling off the edge, wet leaves dripping in the cool dark around them. An owl cries softly in the near distance.

"It was dark, I wasn't...my grandmother used to tell me stories."

"About werewolves."

Hermann flinches.

"Sorry. I know that it's..." Newt breaks off, shrugs gracelessly. "It's fucking weird, man. Four years on, and it doesn't get any less weird."

And Newt keeps talking about just how  _fucked up_ his life is, but all Hermann can think about it how many times Newt's transformed, and within roughly ten seconds he's figured it out to be forty-eight times. Forty-eight blackouts, forty-eight nights of undiluted terror, of tearing yourself inside out, literally, of—

Unless—

"You've figured it out," Hermann says, quietly. "You've broken the code, haven't you?"

"Uh, what?"

"You—transforming—there must be...?"

"Oh, there's a code." Newt laughs bleakly. "There's a code, yeah."

"Tell me!" Hermann turns, closing the distance between them; his hands go unbidden to Newt's shoulders. "Tell me, you've got to tell me."

Newt looks away too quickly.

"It's not like that." He pulls away from Hermann. "Not that easy, you know."

They sit side by side, the first time Hermann's touched someone else without flinching in weeks.

"Yes," he says, and revels in the rise and fall of his own chest. "I think I do."

* * *

 Halloween night, and Hermann's cooped up the lab until eight o'clock. Brad and Cindie, the only other grad students willing to put in a research shift on the holiday, have strung up orange fairylights and toilet-paper ghosts.

He likes the hum of machines, likes the quiet in the lab and in his chest; only his heartbeat keeping time. The dim flare of red and orange and green lights on spectrometers and shiny weird reflections on dry-erase boards. 

 The  _being alone_ is nice and solid, the kind of feeling you can get your teeth into. Hermann can't remember the last time he sat in silence like this, without human voices.

It's only natural that he leap about a meter out of his chair and clutch at his chest when the lab door flies open and—

_holyshitit'saghost_

_  
_"Heyyyyy!" Newt crows, stumbling over the treshhold. He misses the photomasspectrometer by about three inches, collides violently with a projector, and yelps. "Boo! Shit, ow, that hurt like a real motherfucker."

Hermann drops his pen, shoving his rolling chair away so fast it spins on the slick floor tiles. "Get out! What do you think you're  _doing_?! This is—restricted—no access—just—"

"Dude, calm down, calm down," Newt hisses, limping over and dropping into Cyrus Chin's vacant chair. Hermann tries to breathe slowly, but Newt is thrashing around inside the sheet and it's—

The word  _adorable_ did  _not_ flash, neon-bright, across the backs of his eyelids.

"Get out. Come on. Out. Out." Hermann slams his folders shut, drops them into the filing cabinet. Ushers Newt out of the chair, balling up the sheet costume and forcing it into the kid's outstretched arms. "For the love of  _God_ , Newton,  _try_ not to break anything."

"I'm not, I'm—look, I'm not—don't—" Newt trips out through the door, nearly faceplants on the concrete outside. The parking lot is windswept, fallen leaves everywhere. The wind is cool and ominous.

"Come on, dude." Newt turns around; behind his glasses his eyes are painfully bright. He's grinning sideways. Hermann bends to lock up the lab, jamming the key into the lock too hard. When he turns around, Newt's wheeled up a battered bicycle, an open backpack looped over the handlebars. He lifts a bottle of vodka, half-empty. "I've got drinks. There's beer in the backpack."

Hermann huffs out a loud sigh. "Why on  _earth_ would—"

Newt shrugs, corners of his mouth tug up into a tight, nervous smile. The moonlight catches his teeth. They look sharp.

"It's Halloween."

* * *

_"For you." Mr. Halder pushed the book into Hermann's hands._

_"A Brief History of Mathematics," Hermann murmured aloud. "This is written in English."_

_"Which you will have to learn, if you want to work at an American university."_

_"Oh." Hermann looked at the first page; an introduction, all the words a jumble of thick black letters. He could recognize a few—theory, think, you, and love. "I didn't think about that."_

_"No." Mr. Halder came closer. Next door, the neighbor's dog yelped at the window. Hermann let Mrs. Halder grind up against him. He didn't move, barely breathed. "And what do you say, Hermann?"_

_"I..."_

_"Thank you."_

_"Thank you," Hermann whispered, but his voice cracked and was lost. "Thank you."_

* * *

_  
_The swings creak and the seats are a little damp, but Hermann doesn't mind; and the wind through the trees sounds like crying, but he doesn't mind that, either.

"So." Newt unscrews the vodka's bottlecap, pockets it. Takes a long drink. Splutters a little, chokes it down when he notices that Hermann's watching. "Halloween."

"A holiday I have never...celebrated."

"WHAT?" Newt jumps off the swing, chains groaning wildly; he freezes on the damp, cold sand, falls silent. "Germany. Right."

"It isn't that there aren't—I merely never felt the urge to participate..." 

"Sure," Newt says, and drops back into the swing. Pushes himself back and forth a little. "Hey, you want some?"

"I don't drink," Hermann says, stiffly. 

Newt looks at him sideways and scoffs. "You're in college and you don't drink?"

"I don't need alcohol to have  _fun_ ," Hermann informs him blankly, making the very adult decision to ignore Newt's incredulous snort. 

"I thought that was, like, a myth."

Hermann considers for a moment. Imagines himself and Newt reelingly drunk, pressed up against the metal bars of the swingset, against the rough bark of a treetrunk, against—

"I'm German. Of course I drink," he says, and takes the bottle.

* * *

VI.

* * *

And so they get reelingly drunk. Really, really drunk. The drunkest that Hermann has ever been, because although he swallows the vodka without blinking and drinks three beers in a row he's actually kind of a lightweight, and Newt's just hopeless, tripping over his feet when he stands up to get another beer and finally Hermann has to pry the bottle out of his hand.

"Dude, no." Newt reaches for the bottle, moving in dramatic slow-mo. "Give it back, dude. 'M not  _donnnneeeee_."

"I think you've had enough." The ground should definitely  _not_ be spinning. Hermann drops the bottle. Dark beer spilling on pale sand. The moon hangs heavy in the sky overhead. 

Then, out of nowhere, Newt says, 

"You're probably, like, the coolest person I've ever met."

"I'm certainly not." 

"You  _are_."

"Not." Hermann swipes at his eyes, tongue heavy. He feels stupid and expansive and ready to make a huge mistake. 

"Are, too."

"Am not."

"Yeah, you are. You take me seriously."

The words  _no, I don't_ are on Hermann's tongue, but he say them, and at this rate he'd fumble them, anyways. 

"You take me seriously, and, like, no one else does? Not even my parents, you know what I mean? Like, they think I'm smart, and my mom sometimes calls me Doc? But, like, when I talk about the stuff I do, they don't—I mean, everyone just thinks I'm some smart-ass kid with a MENSA subscription."

"I'm sorry, are you not?"

"Screw you, man." Newt punches at Hermann, and Hermann dodges him, and Newt stumbles foward into Hermann's arms. They look at each other like deer in headlights, frozen.

It is Hermann who closes the distance between them, quick and messy, presses his lips into Newt's. Kisses him too hard, and smelling like Old Spice and, distantly, chalk, and he suddenly doesn't know what to do with his hands.

Everything is bright flame and smoke and the smell of lovely reincarnation, universes in Hermann's hands. 

They break apart too soon.

"Um," Newt says, and fumbles with that stupid stringy tie. "That was. Yeah. That was—"

Hermann looks at him. "I concur, Doctor Geiszler."

He pulls Newt in by the tie and kisses him again.

* * *

 

__| 

_(1)_  
  
---|---  
  
_always returns to 1 for_[positive](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Positive.html) . (If [negative](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Negative.html) numbers are included, there are four known cycles (excluding the trivial 0 cycle): (4, 2, 1), ( , ), (, , , , ), and (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ).)

* * *

"You weren't in class today."

Hermann stares at the paperweight on Alderson's desk: heavy and metallic.

"Where were you?"

Hermann runs his tongue across the his front teeth. 

" _Where were you_?" Alderson shoots up, reaches across the desk and grabs Hermann's collar, and, god, he's too fast, in a single swift movement Hermann is on his feet, face inches from Alderson's. "Too busy for me? Is that it? Too busy to meet with your fucking  _professor_?"

"It wasn't—I was—" But Hermann had been out with Vanessa, had lost track of time for the first time in months, years, maybe. She'd told him about her Halloween, about how Chuck Hansen had danced with her at a party and she'd gone out with some of his friends: that Becket kid, and Mako, the short, striking exchange student. She'd asked about his night, and Hermann had given her a vague answer and tried to conceal his blush in a cup of tea. 

"Sit down." Alderson shoves at Hermann, hard, and Hermann collapses into the wooden chair. A gaggle of students pass beneath the open window, shouting back and forth and each other. Hermann feels sick.

"This isn't working out," he breathes. He can't look at Alderson. Feels the other man rise, straighten, approach. Braces himself, but Alderson only kneels down beside Hermann's chair. Eye level. 

"I know boys like you, Hermann. I know what you," Alderson pauses and lets a pause stiffen. "Need."

 _No_ , Hermann thinks, but he can't move his lips, Alderson's hand is on the front of his pants, pressing, fuck, no, no  _no dammit fuck no think about something anything anything else anything but this oh god no don't think about—_

 _  
_"I see you with that whiz-kid. The faggot kid with those stupid glasses. I see you. Don't think I don't. Don't think I don't know what you _do_ , Hermann. You fuck him? Or he fuck you? Huh? Which one is it, Hermann?" Alderson's grinding his hand down, merciless, Hermann is caught, half-hard already but against his will, oh  _so against his will_ _—_

 _  
_"He suck you off? That what he does?" Alderson looks down. "Oh. That's what gets you off."

"It's not," Hermann says, but no words come out. Don't touch me. "Don't touch me."

Alderson ignores him.

" _Don't touch me!_ " He shoves Alderson's hand away but Alderson is smirking, he's not supposed to smirk he's supposed to look ashamed but he doesn't, and he's grabbing Hermann's hair, hard, pushing Hermann's head towards his zipper he's unzipping his pants oh god no Hermann don't letthishappendon'tlethimdothisohgod—

* * *

_"See?" Halder unzips his pants. Hermann stares. He's no stranger to...human anatomy...but this is—_

_"Please," he says. "I don't want to."_

_"It won't_ hurt _," Halder says. "Just put your mouth on it."_

_"No." Hermann tries to thrash away, but Halder snags his arm. They are resoundingly alone in the flat. "Let me go, please."_

_"Put," Halder growls, very quietly. "Your goddamn_ mouth  _on it."_

_So Hermann does. He takes Halder's cock in his mouth, and Halder tells him what to do and won't let go of his head, so he does it even though it tastes awful and feels disgusting, Halder's cock too big in his mouth and shoving down into the back of his throat, so far back he's choking, god, but Halder's making these growling sounds in the base of his throat and won't let Hermann move he's just thrusting into Hermann's mouth so Hermann can't even cry out, can't even—_

* * *

_  
_Alderson comes quickly, filling Hermann's throat. Pushes Hermann away, zips his pants up.

"Get out of here," he says, the way Hermann has heard cruel boys talk to girls. So Hermann stands, and bangs through the door, into the hallway, down the stairs and into the men's bathroom on the first floor. Spits into the sink, again and again, turns the tap on until it's scalding and rinses his mouth. 

He shoves his fingers down his throat, can't make himself vomit. He feels disgusting, hot with rage and shame and fucking  _filth_.

When he's rinsed his mouth out five times, and then ten, and his tongue is numb he puts his jacket on and goes to the white sorority house on University Avenue. 

Vanessa comes to the door in jeans and a cutoff shirt, hair tied up. She's barefoot. She looks happy.

"Hey, Hermann." She stands back to let him in, but Hermann sees past her into the living room and Chuck Hansen is sitting on the couch, his bulldog wandering around the rug and there are five or six girls hanging around but Chuck Hansen has turned and only has eyes for Vanessa. "You wanna come in?"

"No." Hermann shoves his hands into his pockets. "No, Vanessa. Thank you, though."

He walks across the campus alone. It's not his shift at the lab, and he considers going there anyways, just to try to clear his head, but he can't. And he feels dirty, all over, grimy and disgusting and feverish.

Hermann is the only one in the house at the edge of campus; he spends an hour in the shower, until the hot water runs out and he's left shivering. He brushes his teeth until his tongue hurts like a fucker, then spits into the sink and sees blood, realizes that his gums are scraped raw. He can't get the taste of cum out of his mouth.

He falls asleep on top of his bed, wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Has a horrible, brutal dream in which Alderson tries to fuck him and he stabs him, again and again, looks down and realizes that in place of hands he has long, wicked claws. 

* * *

Newt answers the door in plaid flannel pants and an MIT sweatshirt that looks straight out of the 1990s. 

"What's up?"

Hermann looks at him. The sun is going down behind the houses, and all the leaves are brilliant. His tongue still hurts but he tries not to think about it.

"We need to transform together," he says. 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends! I know that this took about a million years to post, but I've been crazy-busy with college applications and studying for my SAT (which I took today!), as well as those lovely AP classes that we all enjoy so very much (this is not to say that I don't enjoy school immensely, because I really, really do). Expect another update soon!

VII.

* * *

"Dude, I don't know." Newt leads him through the vacant living room, booting a cardboard box out of the way. There's a whiteboard propped up on the battered coffee table, covered in scrawled equations. "That's...risky business."

"Have you transformed with anyone?"

"Like I said, it's dangerous." Newt clears his throat. "And, um, it's, like, intimate?"

"Oh." Hermann's stomach twists. "Of course. I can see why...you'd be uncomfortable..."

"What?"

"Nothing," he says, too quickly. Because they haven't talked about Halloween since it happened, haven't talked about the bottles that they left on the playground or the moon over the trees or the way that Newt had arched into Hermann and Hermann had felt how hard they both were, hard and desperate and silent. 

"It's not like—I mean I—it's just dangerous, really, like, probably not something you'd want to do with someone else? I don't know. Last time I..."

"Last time you what?" Hermann asks, but Newt's already vanished into the kitchen.

They end up sitting in Newt's upstairs bedroom; similar to Hermann's imaginings (and when had he started imagining what the inside of Newt's bedroom might look like?) it's messy, strewn with pilfered lab equipment, clothes, the walls plastered with posters for rock bands, the names of stars and galaxies, maps of space and the human heart. 

"Why do you want to, anyways?" Newt sits cross-legged on his bed. "I figured you'd have figured this whole thing out by now."

"Well, I haven't," Hermann says, stiffly. "I haven't figured it out at all. It's only been a few months."

"Took me three."

"This isn't a  _competition_ , Newton."

"Don't call me that, dude."

"Don't call me dude."

They stare at each other. Hermann can't seem to breathe evenly.

"I'm afraid," he says, softly, "That I might hurt someone."

"Oh." Newt's eyes go dark. "Oh."

"I know the locations of every residence hall and dormitory and house on this campus. I know where all of my classmates, all of my—"

The word  _professors_ hangs unspoken on his lips.

"Right, yeah, of course. I didn't even—think about—you're right." Newt chews hard on his lower lip. "Still, I don't think it would work out."

"Why not?"

"Dude, have you seen...when we—when—we're  _animals_ , Hermann. We don't like to think of ourselves like that, but we are. Soon as the moon is full, we're fucking animals."

 Hermann's cheeks heat. "I should not have asked."

"No." Newt looks up, his eyes bright and sharp. "No, dude, you were—right to. I think. I. I mean, I don't know, but..."

"What?"

"It feels right," Newt says, quietly, "with you."

* * *

Vanessa gives him beer. She won't hear his protests, and doesn't care if he has to be at the lab in an hour because last night, she heard a  _very interesting rumor_ about Chuck Hansen and Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori, and it involved fall break, a bar in Philadelphia, and a wet t-shirt contest that Mako Mori most definitely did  _not_ participate in but her two traveling companions most definitely  _had_. 

Hermann, pretending to listen attentively, feels sick. He can't get the taste of Alderson's cock out of his mouth, which makes him feel sicker, and he can't get the feel of Alderson's hands off of his sides and hands and throat and the back of his head. Which makes him angry and dizzy and on the verge of either tears or screaming.

 "Vanessa," he says, suddenly, when Vanessa falls silent to ponder the improbability of Chuck Hansen being a) gay or b) involved with Mako Mori. "Have you ever reported a faculty member for misconduct?"

"No," she says, and drains her mug. They've been loitering in Brenden's Pub for over an hour, and the sunlight is starting to go, and Hermann is sick and restless. "I mean, sort of. It's a long story. Why?"

"I'm looking to report a member of the university faculty."

Of course she asks  _why_. 

"Same as you," Hermann says, too stiffly, too quickly. "A long story. Sordid, also."

"Tell me, Hermann." Vanessa pauses. "Is this about cheating?"

"No." He looks down. "No, it's nothing."

But Vanessa won't cut him a break, and spends the next thirty minutes watching him with wide, soulful eyes until Hermann's afraid that he'll break and tell her everything, and she's tracing patterns on the side of her cold beer mug and finally he says  _let's leave_ and she agrees, but grudgingly. They go out into the cold night. Hermann tries not to look at the moon—it's getting bigger, round and pallid. 

Hermann walks Vanessa back to the sorority house, and she wants him to come inside but he declines politely. He walks to the lab alone, kicking fallen leaves, looking down.

* * *

_"Hermann, I need to speak with you." His father stood in the doorway, shadow slanting across the rug. Hermann closed his maths textbook, laid his pencil on the desk._

_"Yes, Father?"_

_"Your mother found—well, the thing is. I, uh. I'm afraid that your mother made a surprising discovery earlier this week."_

_Hermann's heart was in his throat, choking him. He couldn't breathe right, horrified and electric because they_ know _, they've found out and now everything is going to be awful and wonderful and Halder will go to prison and he'll never see me again and never touch me again and no one else will find out oh god how did they find anyways this is what humiliation feels like._

_"What?"_

_"Hermann," his father came closer, knelt beside Hermann. "You are nearly sixteen. I understand that boys your age have certain—urges—that you must. Uh. Give in to, but your mother found some tissues in the washroom wastebin."_

_"They're not mine," Hermann said, quickly. "They're not mine."_

_"Hermann." His father looked about to laugh. "No one is angry with you. I only ask that you clean up better next time. Naturally, such matters are concerning to your mother."_

_He gave Hermann a look that was supposed to convey something about women not understanding, but Hermann felt sick with horror because it had been Halder who had used those tissues and yes, Hermann had been in the bathroom with him, kneeling by the sink while Halder thrust into his mouth, beat irregular and painful._

_"Please," Hermann said, and he wanted to say more but couldn't, couldn't get the words out. "Father, I..."_

_"Do not apologize, Hermann." His father stood up, put a hand on Hermann's shoulder. "It's alright. It's alright."_

_He left. Hermann looked down, saw that he'd clenched his fists tight enough to pale his knuckles and draw blood from his palms._

_His face twisted up but no tears fell._

* * *

_  
_"Okay." Newt adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose. "You're sure about this?"

"I'm certain." Hermann is aware that his heart is beating very quickly.

"You brought a change of clothes?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Okay." Newt sucks in a deep breath. "Yeah. Okay. So, I guess this is it?"

They look up in unison. The full moon hangs pregnant over the skeletal trees, big and orange like the moon you see in movies. Hermann's heart beats very high and fast in his chest.

He feels really, truly  _alive_ for the first time in days, feels invisible and invincible and insane, like his hands are claws and his ribcage is iron, and he's ready to fight.

"Fuck," Newt hisses, nearby, and at once Hermann feels the pain shoot through  _his_ chest; he's aware, suddenly and vibrantly, that he's never done this in front of anyone, never transformed but that's such a stupid, menial word for what this is, because no descriptions fit this fit, they all just shear away when the pain hits in full.

"Oh, God, ow, fuck." Newt pushes himself away, staggering a little, bends over with his hands on his knees. Hermann tries to keep a straight face—look ahead, think about something else, don't look at Newt oh God Newt's face is all twisted up and white and his eyes, pupils gone huge and dark and feral. Hermann doesn't want to think about Newt's teeth or maybe they're fangs because he can feel his own sliding over his gums and the pain of  _everything_ is scalding, his bones and skin and everything on fire, wild and terrible and beautiful and he wants it to stop but also doesn't.

"This hurts, Newt," he says, dumbly. Newt is doubled over, and he looks up, and his face is so different, so pure and terrifying that Hermann almost doesn't recognize him.

"Just let go," Newt says, and so Hermann does.

* * *

Keep each other in check—that's the plan.

But of course things don't go as planned. They never do.

* * *

_Damp leaves smell of dirt so strong, rich like iron._

_Go fast go fast there's someone else here go fast run, run, they won't catch you they can't_

_It's Newt isn't it, it is, it's him and he won't hurt you_

_Hold your breath it's cold outside slow down, slow down you've made a mistake you're on the edge you're on the edge_

_i can hear voices_

_do you smell that i think it's coffee_

_no stop_

_don't_

_go_

_any_

_further_

* * *

_  
__Fuck_. Hermann opens his eyes very slowly. He's aware, distantly, of laying on his back. The stars look very far away, bright and cold. There are ragged clouds. He feels apart from himself, like he's having an out-of-body experience. 

Easing himself onto his knees, and then his feet, he becomes slowly aware of the blood on his hands, the gouges along his arms. 

 _Dammit_. Hermann's shivering and angry with himself: he's read about this, on online forums, about attacking yourself when there's no one else to go after. He thought that it was something that people made up.

His pants are rent down the right leg (and god, does his leg hurt like a  _fucker_ ) and his shirt is demolished but he goes a few paces and finds his old jacket, pulls it on. One sleeve is tattered, like he'd clawed it up. He doesn't want to see his bare chest, skinny and white, so he fumbles the clasps together while he tries to retrace his steps. 

The leaves have been pushed aside, ground torn up in long marks. Like animals fighting.

"Newt?" He wraps his arms around himself. The trees press close overhead. "Newton?"

No response. Hermann wanders for a few painful and frigid moments, can't find his duffel bag. The blood is drying on his arms and neck and the side of his face; his leg hurts too badly to keep searching so he heads for the edge of the woods. His head is swimming. He feels like he's been shitfaced drunk three nights in a row, like the hangover is finally catching up with him. It's never been like this, never been so bad. Hermann won't admit it but he's scared.

He hears the sirens when he's halfway to campus, stumbles to the edge of the woods and is met by a carnival of red and blue, police cars and an ambulance and the fire truck out, parked in front a shingled white house.

People are shouting, and their breath drifts like mist in the cold air. He sees Newt first, tries to run over but ends up jogging, limp and breathless.

"What happened?" Hermann draws to a halt. "What the hell is going on?"

A student looks over, a young man with sandy hair and a pallid face. "Someone's dead," he says, too loudly.

"Who?" The word sticks in Hermann throat.

"It's Professor," a girl says, sounding shocked, and before the name's out of her mouth Hermann  _knows_. "Alderson."

"No." 

"Yeah, it's true." The red and blue lights spin off of Newt's glasses. He's pale, looks sickened; from the transformation or Alderson's death, Hermann doesn't know. "He's dead. It was—they're not saying but—I mean..."

The girl and boy go back to staring; Hermann hears murmurs rise and swirl like dust, snow, fog. 

_Animal attack. Walking home, leaving his office, brutal, sudden._

_  
_"Newt," he says. " _Newt_."

"Huh?" Newt doesn't look away.

"Newt, I need to talk to you." Hermann's suddenly aware, shockingly, of the blood on his arms. He knows, in his chest and stomach, that is is not his alone.

"Dude, someone's  _dead_. A professor just  _died_."

"I know, Newton." Hermann draws Newt aside, the boy is easy to move, he's pliable with shock. Hermann's voice is shaking. "I know, because I think that I killed him."

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus: can you find the pop culture references (one of which is an ongoing reference) in this chapter?
> 
> (Hint: one comes from a small desert community...one where the sun is hot and the moon beautiful. The other most definitely has to do with the lights passing overhead, and just a little to do with belief (I want to) and the truth [it's out there]).

 

VIII.

* * *

 

"You're sure? I mean, you're  _sure_ sure?" Newt paces on the worn plastic tiles, talking too fast, breathing too hard. "Like, you're...?"

"I'm quite sure, yes." Hermann's slumped in a chair, head in his hands. "This is why I suggested that we transform together. I was attempting to avoid a situation like this."

"Oh, my God. I knew there was a reason, I knew you wouldn't ask something like that, I should have known oh God I'm so stupid—"

"We both know that you are anything but stupid, Newton." Hermann's hand tremble on the tabletop so he shoves them into his lap. There's blood going brown under his fingernails. "I'm lucky that it was Alderson and not anyone—"

And that— _that_ was stupid, that was speaking without thinking, and Newt looks scandalized.

"What do you mean, 'not anyone'—not anyone  _important_ , not that chick Vanessa or—I mean—God, Hermann, he might have been boring as fuck but he was  _someone_ , people fucking love—loved him around campus." Newt shakes his head, folds his arms up tight. "I don't. I just." He turns to Hermann, and his gaze is searching and desperate. "Hermann,  _why_?"

Hermann chokes up, the tears hot and hard in his throat.

"I failed to anticipate this." His hands shake in his lap. "I didn't—the probability of something like this happening when people like  _us_ are..."

"You failed to..." Newt breaks off, shakes his head hard. "Hermann, I. Fuck, man. I." He looks at Hermann like they're both drowning, and that hurts, that hurts more than the pain like a slash through his leg or the ache behind his ribs or the pounding in his head. 

"You killed someone," Newt says, softly, and Hermann turns away before he can let the first tears fall.

* * *

Newt won't let Hermann leave.

Maybe it's some weird instinct kicking in, something in the aftermath of transformation, a relic of pack mentality that tells them to stick together. He forces Hermann into the upstairs bathroom with a towel and pajamas borrowed (stolen?) from one of his housemates, and so Hermann cranks the water up to scalding and stands under it with his arms folded, shaking and crying.

He feels like he's going to vomit, or start screaming, or laughing. There's nothing to do but catalogue the facts, write them out in his head until he feels okay again. Make a list.

  * Alderson is dead.
  * He was attacked by an animal.
  * He was attacked by  _Hermann Gottlieb._
  * He was responsible for sexually assaulting a student.
  * He might have assaulted more than one student
  * he might have assaulted more than one student he might have 
  * assaulted other students in your class he might have done this before, a dozen times a hundred the school might have known about it maybe they didn't though maybe they didn't maybe they just
  * no stop don't think like that keep some sense of order
  * no
  * don't



* * *

The blood runs red-brown down the drain. Hermann watches it spiral, dirty whirlpool around the rusty metal. He can't stop thinking, specifically can't stop thinking about Newt in the shower, about water running down Newt's shoulders and hair and—

"Dude, are you okay?"

"Fine." Hermann shuts off the water, drags the towel across his hair. He can't look at himself in the mirror. He's horny. There's dried blood on his jacket so he folds it up tightly and promises himself that he'll burn it later. 

He goes out into the dim hallway. Newt is standing there shirtless. They make too-long eye contact. 

"You can borrow sweatpants if you want," Newt says, after a hardened silence. "They're clean. Promise."

Hermann doesn't know what else to do, and he's ridiculously hard and very ashamed of that, so he goes down the hall and into Newt's room, and swifts through a heap of laundry that smells like bleach until he finds university-issue sweatpants and an old band shirt (Foo Fighters? As in the UFO phenomenon generally discredited by the scientific community? Who knows) and pulls it on. It occurs to him that he should be in a police station right now, by any universal law, in handcuffs. 

Newt is gone for a long time. Hermann hears the shower start and stop and start again; he's beginning to feel a little unnerved, wonders where the hell Newt's roommates are. He goes down the hall to ask, because frankly the idea of being of alone (not alone?) in this house makes him uneasy.

He raises his fist to pound on the door, but when he gets closer he can hear Newt moaning through the thin wood, and it doesn't take much imagination to realize what the kid's doing in there, and suddenly he's painfully turned on, and  _fuck_ , he needs to get the hell out of here.

He returns to Newt's room and sits on the edge of the bed, tries to collect his scattered thoughts. It's (usually) helpful to compartmentalize; that's a trick Hermann learned decades ago. If you can't sort out your own head, you have no business getting into other people's.

That gets him thinking about Rosa, and it's not happy but at least it's something.

* * *

_His mother called in from playing in the street. He was far from popular with the neighborhood boys, and they usually ended up shoving him around, but there was a soccer match going on in the alleyway and a goalie is a goalie. "_

_Hermann!" She stood in the doorway, in a coat and cap. "Hermann, come quickly. Hurry, now. Put this on."_

_"Mama, the game—"_

_"Now, Hermann." There was something high and tense in her voice, like fright. Hermann stepped out of the goal as Rudolf Hansen booted the ball between the two cans that served as goalposts. Hermann's team roared. Someone shouted after him, but Hermann was running to the doorway, taking his coat from his mother._

_"What's wrong?" He asked, as they went down the street. "Mama, what's wrong, what's happened?"_

_"Your aunt," She told him. She walked very quickly and would not look at him. "Your aunt Rosa is feeling very unwell."_

_"How do you mean?" Hermann trailed her for two blocks to the shabby apartment complex where Rosa lived. He kept asking, but his mother only walked faster. Her face was ashen._

_The fire brigade had been called out, and there were ambulances and a crowd of neighbors and passerby, and the instant that Hermann saw his aunt he knew what had happened._

_They had her in plastic handcuffs, the yellow kind he'd seen once before, on the wrists of a man who tried to jump from the Moltka Bridge near the railway station. They'd taken him away shouting._

_Rosa wasn't shouting; she was white-faced and thrashing, and that was almost worse. His mother ran to her. A policeman took hold of her arm._

_"Ma'am, are you a relation?"_

_"Yes," his mother said. "Yes, she's my brother's wife. Let me through to her."_

_"I'm sorry, ma'am."_

_Hermann watched his mother throw the policeman's arm aside. There was a high, unfamiliar fear to her voice. "You let me the hell through!"_

_Hermann stood and watched, breathless, as his mother went to Aunt Rosa's side and Rosa ignored her, Rosa screamed blindly and twisted her head back and forth, and it was the closest thing to a devil Hermann had seen, and in retrospect it was how he'd felt, on the inside, for a very long time._

* * *

_  
_"Hey, dude." Newt comes and stands in the doorway. He's shirtless, wearing dorky pajama pants with dinosaurs printed on them.

"I should go." Hermann stands up. "It's getting late. I've overstayed my welcome."

"Maybe you should..." Newt trails off, very obviously  _not looking_ at the front of Hermann's pants, and Hermann realizes with a burning jolt that Newt is avoiding staring at his boner—what a strange word that is, too, awkward and juvanile in his mouth...

He sits down. "I cannot stay here."

"You can't leave." Newt crosses the room. "I won't let you leave, dude. I can't."

"Why not? I'm not your  _prisoner_."

"Because, I don't know, you  _murdered someone_?" Newt scoffs, high and disdainful. "Because if you go out there tonight you'll end up in jail, or dead, or worse?"

"What could be worse than death?" Hermann says, although he can imagine a few things by this point and none of them are particularly appealing.

Newt turns on his lamp. When he look at Hermann, his gaze is knife-sharp.

"Exposure."

* * *

"There are online forums..." Hermann says, somewhat dumbly. "There are ways to find others. People know. They talk about it, the government must have some idea of..."

"Look, man, I'm not disputing that. I'm sure that somewhere in the basement of some government building there are a couple of g-men who are aware of the existance of—of us. People like us. But if they were to talk about it, they'd be cast aside as totally nuts, right? Like, the way that society considers alien abductees whackjobs?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Hermann murmurs. But he can't lie to himself. He knows that it's true.

"Look, man, I want to believe. I just don't know how many other people do. You know?"

"This is..." Hermann puts his head in his hands. "I apologize, Newton. I cannot seem to find the right words at this moment."

"It's fine. It's..." Newt sits in his desk chair. "Totally fine. I get it if you feel kind of..."

"No," Hermann says, too quickly. "That has nothing to do with this."

"Horny?" 

Hermann looks away. "Irrelevant."

"It's part of the—transformation. Ha ha. It's, like, a reaction—a chemical reaction, my guess is involving levels of seratonin and adreneline, but all that's really just speculation."

"I'm not—I distance myself from...carnal...activity." Hermann's cheeks are scalding.

"Oh." Did Newt just run his tongue over his canine teeth? Over the edge of his lips? Is Hermann imagining this? Is Hermann imagining Newt coming closer and bending over him and—oh  _god_ —pushing his hand under the waistband of Hermann's pants and Newt is kneeling down and  _fuck oh holy fuck_ he's pressing his lips against the bulge and mouthing something Hermann can't understand but it sends him over the edge and now he doesn't care if he's imagining it he's writhing as Newt puts his mouth around Hermann's cock and runs his tongue around the  _oh fuck don't stop don't stop_ Hermann tangles his fingers up in Newt's hair, pushing Newt's head down and everything is wet heat everything is pure everything is unsolved it is mystery it is the unknown and the known it's a collision it's beautiful and warm and he's aware that he's moaning in Germann and Newt laughs and looks up, his eyes dark and dangerous, and Hermann sees his own reflection in the mirror across the room, the dusty reflection slinging the image back towards him and all he can see are his own eyes, wild and primal, and—

"Fuck, fuck," he breathes, and lets out a soft pained cry as he comes. 

Newt swallows. 

"See?" He stands up. Looks older in the dim light, almost unfamiliar. Hermann isn't sure what Newt means by that, but he feels the shame now, hot and horrible.

So while Newt goes to the bathroom down the hall and brushes his teeth, Hermann sits on the bed and puts his forehead in his hands and tries not to feel ridiculous for wanting to cry.

* * *

IX.

* * *

He wakes up in the middle of the night, tangled up with another warm body.

Doesn't have to look to know that it's Newt, that he fell asleep in Newt's bed and he knows that he should feel awkward but he doesn't.

Shadows play across the cluttered desk and floor, and there's pallid moonlight filtering through the shitty plastic blinds, and Hermann suddenly feels a cool rush of nostalgia or loneliness, he's not sure which.

He puts his head against Newt's chest. He can hear Newt's heartbeat, and it makes everything feel alright.

* * *

X.

* * *

"I can't believe it." Vanessa pulls her sleeves over her hands. She looks wan, like she hasn't slept. The cafeteria is quiet at this hour; but outside, students walk to class in groups, loiter on the central quad. Campus life seems normal—even vibrant. Hermann reminds himself that Alderson, while well-liked by many, taught high-level classes that few students actually took. Half of the student body didn't even know him. 

That makes Hermann feel better. He isn't sure why.

"I mean, I had him for three classes last year. Two of them I took because he was such a great teacher." She shrugs, passes a sleeved hand over her face. "Guess I thought something like this would never happen."

"I know." Hermann tries his  _very, very best_ to wear a look of complete sympathy and mixed horror and sadness. 

"But." Vanessa looks up, and suddenly she's dead serious. "I know who killed him."

" _What_?" Hermann's heart leaps into his chest, hammers high and hard with terror. Vanessa is a smart girl, very, very smart—more than smart, anyone can be smart, she's  _clever_ , she's  _cunning_ , she knows how to work things out that other people can't begin to think of—

"Think about it. A few months ago, there's an animal attack on campus. Those joggers, remember? Now this? It's not a coincidence."

"Oh." Hermann says. "Oh. Of course."

"That was my first thought, you know? That only an animal could've done that. They found him, like, two blocks from our place—when I heard the screams I started running, I didn't think I'd see...they fucked him up, Hermann. That animal  _mutilated_ him."

Hermann swallows. His throat is dry. He digs his fingernails into his palm.

"I'm sure that...the animal wasn't thinking about that. I'm sure that it was just acting out of instinct."

"Well, whatever it was," she stands up and slings her backpack over her shoulder. "I hope they shoot the damn thing."

Hermann watches her leave, her words running madcap circles in his head.

His hands sting and he looks down. His fingernails have drawn blood.

* * *

The policemen hold a campus-wide conference in the biggest lecture hall; they call classes in one by one. Hermann tries to sit alone, but Vanessa drags him over to her merry band: Chuck and Raleigh and Mako. 

"As most of you know," the officer—no, not officer,  _Chief of Police_ , the damn fucking Chief of Police—announces, "an attack occured two nights ago that led to the death of a professor here. I'm sure that all of you can recall a similar attack several months ago, also on campus. It is the department's belief that these two incidents may be related, and certainly aren't isolated. At this time, we can only give you guys  _strong_ security reccommendations: to stay inside after dark, if you absolutely have to go out, do it with a group, don't walk alone. Avoid areas without streetlights. Don't talk with people you don't know, you all know the drill, I'm sure..."

"I thought this was an animal!" Someone calls from the back, and murmurs rise.

"Shit, dude. They never said this might be a  _person_ ," Chuck mutters. 

"Wouldn't surprise me." Raleigh says, but he stares at Mako with a certain measured fear. Hermann wishes that he doesn't recognize the worry in Raleigh's eyes. 

"It  _is_ an animal." Vanessa's knuckles go white. "It was an animal. I saw—I was  _there_."

But Hermann feels sick. Feels like he's just been punched hard in the chest. A suckerpunch, they call it.

He stands up, drifts numbly up the stairs, through the door. Hears the Chief monotoning about safety after dusk falls, about the same stranger-danger spiel that they've all heard a thousand times. 

Goes outside, keeps walking.

* * *

No one stops him. 

* * *

He has nowhere else to go, so he goes to the lab. It's nearly empty, except for one of the seniors—a girl named Krystal. Blond girl, wire-rimmed glasses, pretty, a little cynical. Hermann could use some cynicism right about now. 

"Hello, Gottlieb," she says when he comes in.

"Hello," he says, and sits down. But he can't concentrate on his work, and keeps thinking about the way that Newt had sucked him off, and feels himself getting hard and is hot with shame. The numbers blur before his eyes, and he can't even think straight, and the fear and loathing and worry is catching up with him, and he turns to Krystal and says,

"Don't you wish you go back in time and erase things you've done in the past?"

"Hell, yes." She doesn't look up from her logarithmic charts. "A metric fuckton of booty-calls, some drunken nights junior year. And freshman year. And sophomore year. Yeah, every year, actually." She laughs. "Why?"

"It's very foolish, actually. And improbable. Impossible, actually. Very impossible."

"Why, Hermann?" she says, and is still laughing. 

"Nothing," Hermann tells her. "Nothing, nothing."

But now she's got him thinking. 

Now he knows what he has to do.

* * *

"No way." Newt talks around a plastic straw that he holds between bared teeth like a cigarette. "There's no fucking way, dude."

"It's not your choice."

"You are  _not_ turning yourself in."

"Why not?"

"Why not? Why—" Newt leans in, drops the straw. "Because, I don't know, there are probably millions of people  _like us_ out there, trying to live normal  _fucking lives_ and I'm not about to let you screw that up for them. Okay?"

Hermann casts a black look around the Starlite All-Nite Diner. There are too few patrons, and they've had to keep their voices down all evening.

"I sincerely doubt that there are millions," Hermann says shortly. "In fact, I've yet to see any  _concrete_ evidence that these people online are telling the truth. Up until now, I've believed blindly. But I refuse to do so anymore."

"You can't. You can't turn yourself in, you can't  _doubt_ , Hermann. You can't doubt that this...whatever  _this_ is...you know, you can't, like, doubt that it's real, that it's..."

"Well, I refuse to cast my beliefs around blindly." Hermann shoves away his empty coffee cup. "Unlike you, I place my affections more carefully."

"Hey,  _man_." Newt stands up. He follows Hermann to the doorway. "Screw you, man."

"You think I  _asked_ for this?" Hermann says, too loudly. He bangs through the screen door hard and merciless. It's rained. The pavement outside is slick and shiny. 

"You think I  _did_?" 

"You forget yourself, Newton!" Hermann goes down the steps, wants to slap Newt for following him. "You forget that this is all new to me, that all the pain and blood and  _fear_ isn't old hat, it's new and it's terrifying. You forget that. Maybe you don't care enough to remember."

"Don't you  _dare_ —"

"You think that I  _want_ this? This has  _fucked_ me up, Newton, this has fucked me up like nothing else." He feels charged and full of potential energy. The potential to snap, bend, maybe break. "Whatever  _attacked_ me, whatever  _animal_ , whatever..."

"You can't think like that, it's an impusle, it's not an—"

"I hope that they—"

"It was dark, it was dark, visibility was—"

"—bring a  _fucking_ gun, because—"

" _I couldn't see who it was that night_!"

From ten paces ahead, Hermann hears every word. Freeze. Blood singing cold through his veins. Throbbing. He turns, slowly. Breath coming fast and cool.

He looks at Newt.

"It was you."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long time it took to get this one published! I've been super busy with applying to colleges and sitting my SATs for the last time!!!! (Very exciting, I know)


	7. Chapter 7

XI.

* * *

"Don't look at me!" Hermann's voice tears raw from his throat. What he means is:  _I can't look at you right now._ And,  _I can't stand the way you look at me. Like everything's going to break._

 _  
_"I—" Newt drops his hands to his sides. He looks small and frightened, under the yellow cone of light filtering from the streetlamp. A timid, misty rain has begun to fall.

"Don't follow me!" Tears scald his throat. "What if I—do you even realize what you've  _done_ , Newton? What if I wanted to—to get married, to have  _children_? You think that I can do those things in this—this  _state_?"

"You didn't seem interested in  _marriage_ when I was sucking your dick last night!" Newt shouts, not bothering to keep his voice down and Hermann's heart jumps frantic and hot into his mouth.

"Shut up!" He charges forward and grabs Newt's collar. In a single swift motion, he's got Newt up against an alley wall, wet bricks and yellowed light and Newt's eyes wide behind his glasses. "You know  _nothing_." _  
_

"I know I got you off." Newt thrashes against Hermann. He's breathing hard. "I know you _liked_ it."

"Shut up." Hermann jerks Newt. The kid's leering now. Sideways. A sick satisfaction. 

"What? Afraid that people are gonna  _find out_?"

"I'm not—like that, I'm not—maybe you...but I don't...that was..."

"Yeah, you're right. Can't blame you for that. We all get horny when the moon's new. Maybe I can blame you for Alderson's death, though. You know, we've got our own authorities. We've got our own laws. Did I ever tell you that, Hermann?" 

Hermann nearly relinquishes his hold. Is Newt lying? He's never considered that— _things_ like them—might have their own legal system. He's willing to bet that there's a lot of torture involved. Possibly stoning. Burning at the stake. That kind of thing.

"I should never have listened to you." What Hermann meant to say was  _I regret talking to you at all,_ but he doesn't have the heart to say that. It's not so true, either. He can't lie to himself like that. He can't.  _  
_

"What are you gonna do?" Newt smirks. "Punish me?"

And, like that, a hot red rush, Hermann kisses him.

* * *

 _Hard_.

He's relentless. He feels Newt jump under him, the kid's whole body jerking. He feels how hard Newt is. Presses himself forward, fueled by anger, unforgiving. Grinds down. Newt yelps and moans into his mouth. 

"Fuck," he breathes, when Hermann breaks away for a moment, and Hermann doesn't want to hear Newt talking so he kisses him again, harder, and now  _he's_ getting hard and dammit, fuck, this wasn't supposed to happen, it wasn't supposed to go down like this he was supposed to walk away but it's like someone else is controlling his body. And now he's shoving his hand down Newt's waistband and Newt is arching his back and Hermann's pressing his hand to the heat of Newt's boxers and Newt makes this  _sound_ in the back of his throat and it makes Hermann a little more than crazy. 

And then there's really nothing else to do but put his hand inside Newt's boxers and fuck, he feels filthy touching Newt like this  _god_ he's got his fucking hand around an eighteen—is Newt eighteen? Seventeen? Hermann can't remember and isn't even sure that he  _knows_ —year-old's cock but Newt is kind of thrusting roughly into Hermann's hand and so Hermann has to go faster and Newt is breaking away and burying his face in Hermann's shoulder, the side of his neck, whining, the kid is shaking and then gasping, rough,  _oh fuck Hermann I'm gonna come_ and Hermann is merciless, won't slow down won't stop won't let Newt get off easy and Newt comes hard into Hermann's hand, trembling, almost convulsing, his knuckles white on Hermann's jacket. 

Hermann breaks away first. He pushes Newt off, throat sticky with shame and disgust. 

"Fuck." Newt collapses against the wall. He's breathing hard. Hermann can see his stomach shaking as he exhales. "Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, f—"

"Shut up. Be quiet." Hermann turns away. The rain is falling harder now. He swipes his hand against his pants. "Clean yourself up."

Then he realizes what he's said. Then he realizes who he sounds like.

Then he realizes what he's done.

* * *

XII.

"Come out."

Silence.

"Please, dude."

Silence.

"Hermann, man,  _please_. You're freaking me out. Are you okay? Because, like, I can call someone? If you're not?"

"Leave me alone." Hermann is bent over the sink. The diner's bathroom is a single-room affair, smaller than a closet. Bare bulb, sticky light. Dirty mirror. Someone's left the toilet seat up. 

"Come on. Dude, they're gonna close."

"Go." Hermann's face is dripping. He'd splashed water on it in a vain attempt to rouse himself from what he'd hoped was some kind of nightmare. 

It wasn't, apparently. 

"Dude, you shouldn't feel bad, okay?" Newt leans close to the door crack. "You just gave me, like, the best orgasm of my life."

"Please stop," Hermann croaks, voice hitching. 

"I'm gonna kick this door down."

Hermann hears Newt backing up, and doesn't doubt that the kid would go through with it. He unlocks the door, opens it a crack. Newt grabs the handle and forces it open wider. 

"You look like shit."

"I need you to leave." Hermann sucks in a deep breath. "I need to be alone."

Newt looks crestfallen.

"Okay."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not you." Hermann feels sick. "It's me."

Newt laughs bleakly. "I've heard that line before."

Hermann's teeth come down on his lower lip. 

"Come on." Newt says, quietly. He holds out his hand. "Let's go."

* * *

Hermann refuses to hold Newt's hand, but he follows Newt outside. The downpour hasn't abated. 

They go down Main Street, an empty Main Street with all the lights too bright in the rain. 

Newt is, shockingly (miraculously?) silent. Until they reach the edge of the woods, where he grabs Hermann's elbow.

"Let's go through the woods."

"We can't." Hermann says, automatically. They look at each other.

"Hermann, we're the monsters they warned the student body about."

Hermann swallows. "You are very right, Newton."

All the leaves are dripping. It's very cold. Newt is quiet for a while longer. Then he says,

"You know, I wasn't trying to...I understand that you're not...you know, gay."

"I'm not." 

"Gay?"

"I'm..." Hermann stiffens. He wants to stop talking but silence would be worse, and silence would lead to further assumption on Newt's part. "Up until the attack, I never really. Uh. That is to say, I've never felt the express need to initiate sexual activity with anyone."

"Like, you're asexual?"

"I don't know." Maybe, Hermann thinks, but he can't trust anything right now, let alone himself. "I don't think so."

"I know it's confusing," Newt murmurs then, almost meekly. He kicks out hard, lashing towards a heap of dead leaves. They scatter, dark and wet, and the smell of rotting undergrowth rises. Thick and heady. "And, you know, I'm sorry I said that. About me sucking your dick. I can't blame you for that. I know, you know? What it's like? The...transformation, and all that."

"Please." Hermann tries to even out his breathing. "Please, stop."

"Stop what?" Newt is wide-eyed with confusion, and that enrages Hermann because why can't Newt just fucking  _understand_ , dammit?

"Newton, I am not like you. Do you understand that? I can't  _believe_ blindly in this kind of thing. I can't forgive what's happened, because I can't let myself believe it." He draws in a breath, sucking it into his lungs. Cold, the smell of dead leaves. Smoke. "This has forever altered my life. I cannot begin to imagine in how many ways. I know that marriage will be impossible. I—I never considered myself being married, or having a family. If I did, it was to fulfill a sense of duty to my family. But it was a promise of some kind of normalcy on the horizon. Now, all of that is gone. When I was attacked that night, I told myself that it was an animal, a rogue, some kind of...beast. But I allowed myself to believe, if even for a moment, that it was something not of this world. When I let myself search the internet, lurk around online forums at three o'clock in the morning, I was telling myself that there was the possibility that what had happened  _was_ an animal attack. Because that's—that's who I am, Newton. I am logic, and order. And I cannot allow myself to believe something blindly."

He stops, and sees that Newt is still and staring with his lips parted, like he's about to speak but he's been struck dumb. 

"And even now, even after the revelation that it was you who inflicted this upon me, I...I want to hate you, but I cannot."

Newt laughs. A small, bleak, terrible laugh from the lips of a boy. A boy, because he suddenly looks terribly young. Terribly, terribly young.

"You should hate me. You've got every right to."

They begin to walk again. Slowly. Hermann's leg hurts, and he limps. He doesn't bother to hide the awkward gait from Newt, nor does he make excuses. 

Newt waits until they can see the lights of campus before asking, "What happened?"

"An accident. When I was very young."

"Like, what kind of accident?"

Hermann doesn't want to tell Newt. They go along the damp pavement and the streetlights make everything gold. The house that Hermann lives in is quiet and dark, save for a single light burning upstairs. He sighs, and his breath rises in the frigid air.

"Come inside," he says, and Newt does. 

* * *

_I was only a little boy when it happened. Very young. My memory of those years consists mostly of studying. Mathematics, of course..._

Are you trying to derail the conversation, dude? 

_No. I'm merely trying to lay a foundation. By the way, I certainly hope that you do not expect me to tell you the entire story._

_  
_Uh, well yeah. When you invited me in that's kind of where my mind went, yeah.

_You're not going to hear the whole story._

_  
_Can you tell me what happened?

_I will tell you this. I was young, and I was running._

_  
_Dude, you're the worst story-teller I've ever heard. Ever. Like, ever, ever.

_Fine. I will tell you this much. I was running away from a man who frightened me very much._

* * *

Newt leaves at midnight, having pestered Hermann for what feels like half a century. They stand in the doorway for a long time, in silence, but neither says anything, neither moves. Hermann notices that Newt's lips, the corners of his lips, are a very particular shade of red. 

 "Night." Newt turns and jogs away, down the tree-lined avenue towards home. Hermann folds his arms up tight against his chest. He feels sick and shaky with the half-lies, the almost-truths. He knows that he won't sleep tonight.

* * *

They fall into an easy rhythm after that, let the awkwardness dissapate a little. They see each other in the cafeteria, between classes, in the evenings. They go to the Starlite All-Nite Diner. They walk around campus after it's rained, or when the air is cold enough to drive others indoors. They don't talk about transformations, and they don't talk about sex.

It's easy to forget. By Thanksgiving break, Hermann has nearly forgotten the way that Newt's lip felt on his own, or what it was to touch another person like that. And he's okay with that. 

Neither of them go home for the break. Newt skirts around mentioning why; something about his family disagreeing with his lifestyle. Hermann thinks that that bit is probably bullshit, but doesn't call Newt out on it. Hermann doesn't have the money to fly home to Germany, but he videochats with his parents for an awkward hour and calls his sister until the long-distance silence become overwhelming and they're both making sorry excuses to hang up. 

After that there are exams to worry about, and Hermann spends countless hours in the lab. Newt studies in the library, or in his room, and they see each other very little. 

Sometimes Hermann dreams about kissing Newt, about Newt in his spiked leather jacket straddling Hermann, about getting Hermann hard, Newt sucking him off until Hermann is thrashing and whimpering and he always wakes up from those dreams painfully hard and ashamed. 

Then it's time for exams, and Hermann goes to the testing hall nervous but excited, because he likes the tangibility of all this.

* * *

After exams, they are mad with liberation.

Hermann doesn't know it, maybe doesn't want to admit it to himself, but these are some of the best nights of his life.

* * *

There is the evening that they're finished with finals, and they go out for a drink, him and Newt. He swears that he'll stay sober but suddenly it's midnight and they're both totally hammered and Newt is dragging Hermann up to a wooden stage to sing a karaoke duet, and it's something from a film called  _Grease_ that Hermann saw once, a long time ago when he was teaching himself English, but he's never understood the song  _You're The One That I Want_ any better than when he's belting it out at twelve-thirty on a Friday night, drunk and warm and happy. He doesn't care that he's humiliating himself. He doesn't care that he'll be hungover in the morning. It doesn't seem to matter then, only him and Newt and the wooden platform and the lyrics running across the screen and the two of them laughing so hard they're practically crying.

One night Hermann goes to Newt's room to study and 'hang out' (a lovely turn of phrase he's never gotten to use before now) and ends up falling asleep on Newt's bed, papers spread out around him, and wakes up two hours later to find Newt curled up with his head on Hermann's chest and the Sex Pistols blasting and all the lights blazing. 

It snows for the first time in late November, and Newt and Hermann eschew all responsibility and join a group of students in a huge snowball fight on the central quad. Vanessa and Chuck and Mako and Raleigh are there, and afterwards they all go and get coffee in the cafeteria and spend the afternoon hanging around together. It feels good to be in good company. Hermann sees Vanessa and Chuck holding hands under the table, and they leave together in the late afternoon. 

* * *

The winter holidays come up quickly. New forces Hermann to visit a Christmas tree lot in town, although Hermann insists that buying a tree is both impractical and a waste of money. Newt pays six dollars for a three foot tall pine tree in a plastic pot, smirking broadly at Hermann. Hermann spends the next half hour laughing at Newt as Newt struggles to carry the unwieldy tree across campus, through two feet of snow.

Hermann has already bought his plane ticket to return for Germany for Christmas. He bids Newt an awkward farewell at the bus station in town. They hug, and Hermann can tell that Newt wants to say something. Luckily, the bus pulls up, bound for New York City, and Hermann watches Newt wave from the station until the vehicle turns a corner.

Going home feels good. It's nice to see his parents. He sees his sister on Christmas morning; she travels from Munich, has brought him a scarf and her good wishes. She's seeing a police detective in Munich, very seriously, thinks that he might propose to her. This makes Hermann happy but also a little sad, and confused, because suddenly life seems to be spinning very quickly around him.

After a few days the apartment feels too small. He wakes one night sweating and frightened, from a horrible dream in which Mr. Halder had pushed him down against the bed's headboard and unzipped his pants, slowly, and although Hermann thrashes he cannot get away.

Shaking, he climbs out of bed and relocates to the balcony outside the kitchen. It's narrow, and the metal rails are freezing. His breath swirls and clouds in the cold air. He takes out his cell phone and dials.

"Hello?"

"Sorry," he says, at once: quickly, relieved. "Sorry if I woke you up."

"It's okay. Why did you call me?"

He pauses. Looks down at two AM Berlin, lights burning up the winter dark. "I needed to call someone. I only felt right calling you."

"Oh. Okay." Long distance air hums between them. "Well, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I just." Hermann pauses again, longer. Flushing. "I wanted to hear you voice."

Silence. 

"Oh," Newt says. "Wow."

"A human defense mechanism. The sound of a familiar voice will..."

"Dude, no." Soft, tired laughter. "Just let me have this one, okay?"

Hermann is quiet. Suddenly his heart is beating high and fast in his chest. "Okay," he says, into the cold heart of the night.

* * *

He flies home the day after Christmas. Tickets are dirt-cheap, and he can't afford anything else. He packs his sister's scarf and the coat that his parents had given him, and spends most of the flight sleeping. Or trying to. His dreams are unsettled, haunted by a familiar face and familiar hands. He swears that he can still taste Halder's mouth on his own. 

Hermann's only been home twice since those days. The first time, he couldn't sleep in his old room. He woke in the middle of the night after a brutal dream, could have  _sworn_ that Halder was kneeling on the end of his bed, he'd thrown up and slept shivering on the couch in the front room instead. The second time had been a little less disturbing, mostly because by then Halder had moved to some town in the far south, further south than Munich, and Hermann did not have to worry about him much. 

He wakes up at JFK, manuevers his way through the too-bright airport and catches the last Greyhound bus northeast. Falls asleep again, dreams but this time he can hear Newt's voice and wakes up feeling that everything will alright. He gets off at the bus station in town, lugs his suitcase three snowy blocks home with his leg aching in the cold but somehow doesn't mind at all.

* * *

Newt comes over in the morning, and they sit in the front room by the Christmas tree his housemates put up while he was away.

"So," Hermann says, and begins to feel somewhat awkward because he's not used to any of this. "How was your holiday?"

"Good," Newt sprawls on the rug, on his back. His shirt rides up and Hermann makes himself look away. "Yeah, I saw my parents for a couple of days. Pretty awkward. My whole family came over. Not for Christmas. The whole Jewish thing, you know. Anyways, my grandfather, right, he kept, like, telling me off for going to a 'liberal arts' school, like, what the hell, dude? I want a good education, you know? I don't know. Whatever. Family."

"I think I know what you mean," Hermann admits. "My family can be a little cloying as well."

"That's one word for it," Newt mumbles. "Whatever, though. I don't let their shitty vibes cramp my style."

And then Hermann is snorting in spite of himself, and they're both laughing, good and hard, and at the same time they blurt  _I missed you_ and god, it's so  _sweet_ it hurts a little and Hermann lets Newt kiss him, knows that it's a terrible mistake but Newt is stripping off his denim jacket and looping an arm behind Hermann's head.

"We should go upstaris," he says against Hermann's mouth and Hermann is hard and awkward, goes upstairs beside Newt even though he feels weird and empty and dirty doing this, really doesn't want to at all.

Newt pushes Hermann towards the bed, and Hermann goes willingly until Newt tries to force him back towards the headboard, and then he's shooting away from the wall, nearly shoving Newt. 

"Stop!"

"What?" Newt fumbles. "Dude, what is it?"

"Stop, please." Hermann turns away. No longer hard, he tries to take deep breaths. His throat is sticky and dry. "I can't."

"Can't what?"

"Do this." Swallow, just once. His tongue is heavy. "I can't do this."

"Dude, we're not getting fuckin'  _married_ ," Newt mutters, fumbling his belt on again. "I just thought..."

"It's not that..."

"No, it's fine," Newt says, although it clearly isn't. "I get it."

"It's not you," Hermann says, pleadingly. "It's me, really, Newton."

"Don't call me that. Please."

"Sorry. I just think I need some time to think about all this."

Newt goes to the doorway. He turns and fixes Hermann with a swift, exacting stare.

"Yeah," he says, softly. "Yeah, me, too."

* * *

Hermann watches Newt collect his jacket and put on his boots and go out onto the snowy street, and then he closes the door and lets himself breathe. It's difficult. 

* * *

 

"I knew it. I knew it was the holiday. People get so damn depressed around the holidays, probably all that being with family." Vanessa upends a packet of sugar into her coffee and stirs. "That's it, right?"

"Something like that." Hermann mutters, holding the door as they leave the student-run cafe. They trek across the campus, through low berms of snow that's slowly melting. There's a storm predicted later in the week; Hermann, who has yet to experience a transformation in the snow, is not looking forwards to this. 

"Well." Vanessa drinks some coffee, pauses to watch a couple of freshmen building a snowman in front of the dorms. "You know you can tell me anything."

 _That's the problem_ , Hermann thinks. "I know."

They reach the sorority's house, brilliant with holiday lights. Some of the girls have built a snowman out front, clad in a neon green bra. They've spraypainted underneath  _fight the male gaze_. Hermann likes that a lot. He follows Vanessa into the house, they find the living room empty.

"No one home, I guess." She sheds her jacket, hangs it up. "They probably have social lives."

Hermann opens his mouth to aplogize. 

"I'm kidding, Hermann." She sits down at the kitchen table. Hermann pulls out a chair and sits for a moment before he rises to pace.

"Do you ever think that you know someone—or are beginning to know them, and they turn around change radically? Or do something that you find utterly unlikeable? And you want to continue thinking that everything between you is completely fine, but you know that it's not, that it never can be, everything in your life has suddenly changed and now it's too late to go back..."

"Hermann." Vanessa drinks some more coffee. "Are you okay?"

"I have something to tell you, Vanessa."

She opens her mouth and he's about to blurt it out when her cell phone rings, and he sees that it's Chuck.

"Tell me," she says, but the moment is gone and Hermann tells her that she should answer it.

He leaves her in the kitchen, talking to Chuck. They're going on a date tomorrow night. 

On the way home, his throat feels hot and tight and he cries without realizing it.

* * *

They don't see each other until New Year's Eve. Then Hermann is on his way to the lab and Newt stops him.

"Didn't expect to see you." Newt puts his hands in his pockets. 

"No."

"Maybe we should..."

"I'm late for..."

"Forget it," Newt says, stiffly. "I guess you're not ready to, like, admit what you are, or whatever."

That stings like a  _bitch_. 

"You obviously don't understand," Hermann says stiffly.

"I'm pretty sure I do, actually."

"You don't. I can assure you."

"That what?" Newt doesn't bother keeping his voice down; the central quad is empty. There are lights on in all the dorms, music blaring in the distance. "That you want to forget whatever happened with us? That it was some random hook up that you can sleep off? That none of it mattered—that what we  _are_ doesn't matter?"

"Listen to me." Hermann steps close, grabs Newt's collar. There's nothing gentle about it, nothing romantic. It's force and anger and cold. "You little  _punk_."

"You trying to—talk dirty—to me?" Newt sounds a little breathless. Hermann releases his collar, steps back.

"I told you that my leg was injured while I was running from something. It was a man, Newton. It was a man who touched me. For a long time. In a way that I could not stop."

Newt is silent, perhaps struck momentarily dumb. Then he hisses  _shit_. Looks at Hermann. Like he doesn't know what to say.

"Maybe you'll take that into consideration," Hermann snaps, and turns on his heel to storm away through the gathering dusk.

* * *

He's shaky after that.

Newt doesn't stick around.

They edge in circles around each other, careful. Exchange polite greetings, somewhat awkward. Newt keeps his mouth closed for once.

Lesser miracles have been known to happen. 

Weeks pass. Hermann has transformed alone, in the basement of the lab. Wakes bloody, covered with bruises, scratches. Doesn't go to Vanessa. Tends to his own wounds.

Doesn't call Newt. He dreams about Newt sometimes, always wakes up sad and lonely. 

 _It's over_ , he tells himself, and so it is. 

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

XIII.

* * *

He's in the lab when he hears the news, writing a system of equations on a chalkboard, standing on tiptoe because he's scrawled over nearly every inch of space. 

"The police are back on campus." 

"What?" Hermann fumbles the chalk, drops it. Rupert, a gangly British exchange student, stands in the doorway. "What do you mean?"

"I dunno, mate. I wouldn't get worked up about it." Rupert lifts a coffee cup to his lips, addressing the lab at large. "All I've heard is that they're looking into the case again. The Alderson case."

Hermann swallows hard. "Oh." Forcing a nonchalant tone into his voice: "Well, I hope they find whatever got to him."

"About that—" Rupert begins, but Hermann excuses himself and flees the lab, pulling on his jacket. He doesn't bother signing out on the "Daily Worklog", a system imposed by a band of professors tired of students lying about the amount of time they'd spend working in the lab. He's already gone well over his required hours, anyways.

The day is cold and sullenly gray; it looks like snow, and all the clouds are heavy and low. Hermann walks quickly with his head down. The panic swells up stiff and light inside of him, and he takes deep breaths, attempting in vain to calm himself. 

 _It's nothing. They won't find you out. Even if they_ did  _discover that it wasn't an animal, they can't prove that it was a human. It wasn't a human, it wasn't a human, it wasn't you, it wasn't you_.

He repeats that mantra: it wasn't you, it wasn't you. It's mid-March (although the unusually frigid weather might have come from mid-December); he'd assumed that the case would have been closed for months now. Written off as an animal attack, something horrifying but unfortunate. He tells himself that the police are probably just clearing up lingering questions, tries to calm himself with that thought until he reaches the house.

And stops.

The police cruiser is parked outside, exhaust curling pale and gritty into the frozen air. Two cops are standing on the porch, wearing thick windbreakers with black furry collars. Hermann's eyes go at once to their guns and handcuffs. One of his housemates—John, in pajama pants and eyeglasses—is standing in the doorway. He lifts a hand and points to Hermann.

Hermann thinks about running. Of course he does; how could he  _not_? 

Then he considers that he might make it a block before his leg gives out, and he approaches the porch with the greatest swagger of innocence he can muster.

"Hello."

"Are you Hermann Gottleib?"

"Yes, I am."

Hands in your pockets, look them in the eyes, smile a little. Not too friendly, not too distant. Don't look suspicious.

He climbs the porch steps.

"They just want to ask you some questions," John says, a little dumbly. "Routine, they said."

"Thank you, Mister Peters." One of the cops gestures John back into the house, and John looks over his shoulder before he does, mouths  _sorry_. Hermann forces a tight smile in reply.

"We just have a couple of questions for you, Hermann." The officers are both tall. They are both men. 

"Of course."

"I assume that you've heard that the case was reopened?"

"I have."

"News travels fast, huh?"

"It does."

"We're just doing some routine checks—basically clearing up information about the night of the attack." The taller officer flips open a notepad. His nameplate reads Jones. "Questioning students whose whereabouts the night of the attack were never accounted for."

Hermann swallows. "You think that a student was reponsible for this?"

Officer Jones clears his throat softly. His partner shakes his head.

"We can't release those details at this time."

"But—you think that it...?"

"We're just checking alibis."

It sounds romantic, exotic: alibi. 

"I was at the lab," he blurts, before he can stop himself. Then, calmer. "I was at the campus lab. Working on my thesis project."

Officer Jones writes something down. "Right."

"Can you verify that?" The second officer—Hernandez, the nameplate glints—asks. Hermann nodes mutely, then pauses.

"We have a log that we write our research hours in. For practical reasons. Sometimes we forget to write them in—it's easy to do that."

"I can imagine." Officer Jones closes the notepad and slides his pen into his jacket pocket. "Two of your housemates have given us the same answer. We'll check back if we have any other questions."

"Yes, sir." Hermann says, and waits until they've driven away before rushing back into the house.

He goes upstairs, straight to John's bedroom. John is smoking a cigarette at the window. 

"Hey, man."

"John, what did they want with us?" 

"Calm down." John closes the window, offers Hermann a cigarette. "Smoke?"

Hermann, who has smoked perhaps twice in his life, accepts the proffered cigarette. John lights it, Hermann sucks in deep breaths of the thick smoke. It's kind of medatative, in a not-so-great way. If someone offered him mind-altering drugs right now he might accept.

"All they wanted to know was what I doing that night. I told them I was at the lab for a couple of hours."

"Me too." Hermann inhales again, holds the smoke in, exhales. "Me too."

"So? Why are you freaked out?"

"I'm not," he says, too quickly. Then: shit. John is staring at him and Hermann realizes how guilty he seems. "I am going to very honest, John."

"About what?"

"That evening I was very. Drunk. And I might have. Uh. Forgotten my whereabouts."

"Dude." John laughs. " _Dude_." He laughs, and smoke curls out of his nose; he looks a little like a dragon then. "That's...I didn't think that's something you'd be into, Hermann."

"I'm not. I was out. With friends."

He tells John some clever lies about going out with Vanessa, and when he's fairly certain that John believes him he abscondes to his bedroom. Sits trembling on the bed. He has the feeling of waiting, but he isn't sure what he's waiting for.

* * *

IX.

A week turns into two, and the weather warms, and Hermann mostly forgets about the police investigation.

It's always there, but in the back of his mind, and sometimes many days pass when he does not think about Alderson or bloodied hands or the possibility of jail cells. 

The sun comes out more and more, and it only a snows a few times—thin snow that quickly turns to slush on the pavement. It's still bitterly cold in the mornings, though, and the days are short. Still, springtime seems to be coming, and that makes Hermann fairly happy.

"You look good," Vanessa says one Monday morning as they head for the science building. "You look happy."

"I got a lot of sleep last night," Hermann lies. Actually, he'd been unhappy all afternoon and cried in the shower without really knowing why—or, he tells himself he isn't sure why. He knows, really, in his heart of hearts, that he's crying over a dead possibility. What could have been.

"Good," Vanessa says. "That's good, Hermann." Chuck joins them and she stands on her toes to kiss him on the mouth. Hermann looks away. 

He and Chuck and Vanessa start across campus again, but are quickly derailed by a frenzy of activity.

"Guys, all students are supposed to report to lecture halls by year." Raleigh Becket slings an arm around Chuck's shoulder, another around Hermann's. "Guess we're going to room 23A. Wherever that is."

"What's happening?" Hermann asks, as groups of students stream across the quad. Shouts and laughter rise. Two boys get into a pretty involved shoving match and fall over. Someone taps Hermann's arm.

He turns, and it's Newt standing there, crooked arm full of textbooks, backpack slung over his shoulder. 

"It's the police," he says, quickly and quietly. "Thought you should know."

* * *

He sits next to Vanessa in the lecture hall, and to his left Raleigh fiddles around with a plastic pen. A police officer stands at the bottom of the hall, looking up at eight hundred freshmen students. 

"As many of you are now aware, the case involving your professor has been reopened."

Someone shouts  _why_ and the officer folds his arms up.

"New information has led us to believe—"

Hermann steadies himself.

"—that this attack may not have been the result of a rogue animal, as was previously believed."

A collective intake of breath. Someone gasps loudly, another says, 'what the fuck'. Hermann's hands clench unbidden on his leg. 

"Details are still few. But, look, I know how well-liked Professor Alderson was around campus. I'm not trying to make this difficult for anyone. And I think you all deserve to know that there is the possibility," and here the officer hooks his thumbs around his beltloops, like he's in a cowboy film, "that this was done by a person."

Murmurs rise up again. Hermann feels like he's about to vomit. Beside him, Raleigh lets out a shocked sound.

"Holy shit. Brutal."

"Very," Hermann murmurs. Two rows ahead, Newt turns around and they makes stiff, heavy eye contact. Hermann breaks it first.

* * *

He manages to procrastinate any major panic until the weekend. The weekend is when he's woken by the sound of boots on the stairs, heavy and loud.

John comes into his room, silent in socks and no shirt. "They're here," he says. Hermann jolts wide awake, fumbling for his glasses. He slides them on. 

"Who?"

"The cops, dude. More questions. Thought I'd wake you."

"Thank you," Hermann says, but he's shaking as he dresses quickly. He lingers in the bathroom, brushing his teeth for much longer than necessary, washing his face twice. By the time he comes downstairs he's still nervous as hell but the others are gone; it's only the two officers, Jones and Hernandez, and John. He comes in and John disappears quickly, and the officers round on him.

"We have some more questions," Officer Jones says, almost apologetically. Hermann sees the way they look at him. Like he's prey. His gaze flickers to the door unbidden.

"Just to clarify—the night of the attack on Professor Alderson, you were...?"

"In the lab."

"Okay. Can anyone verify that?"

"I was there alone." He tells himself that he's good at this, at playing innocent. "Maybe someone saw me come in, but..."

"Sure, sure. We've gotten that response from a couple of you kids." Officer Jones scrawls something on his notepad. "The security footage will check out, though." 

Then he pauses, and looks up, and meets Hermann's eye.

And Hermann looks at him.

And they both  _know_.

* * *

 He waits until dusk, and then he goes to Newt's place.

Newt answers the door in socks and a too-big MIT t-shirt.

"Yo."

"They know it was me." He tumbles through the door, breathless, pushing past Newt. "Is anyone home? Are you alone here?"

"Uh. Yeah. Come in." Sarcastic, Newt waves Hermann into the living room. There are beer cans on the floor. It smells like sweat. "So, is this whole 'not talking' thing over? Because, like, I was getting pretty sick of that."

"They know it was me, Newton. They are going to discover very soon that it was me behind. Behind the. Incident."

"Um." Newt freezes. "What did you just say?"

"I have been visited by the police numerous times. I gave them the answer that on the night of the incident I had been at the lab and now they are recoming—returning, I..." his English slips a little, hitches, and Hermann realizes that  _that's_ how scared he is, he's forgetting to speak a language he's known fluently for years. "They are reviewing the security footage from the night of the incident, and when they find me missing from the lab, they'll call me in, I'll be found out."

There is a deafening silence. Newt sucks in a deep, deep breath.

"Shit."

"I know."

" _Shit_."

"I  _know_."

"What do we do?" He turns to Hermann with a desperate look, and as they are being pulled together by some unstoppable force they come together, colliding in a violent embrace. Newt puts his head on Hermann's chest, and Hermann's hand goes to tangle in Newt's hair. "What the hell are we gonna do, Hermann?"

Hermann stares at the yellow wallpaper until dark spots spin in front of his eyes. Then he looks down at Newt.

"We're going to leave."

" _What_?" Newt jerks back. "We're gonna  _what_?"

"We're going to leave. We can leave. We can..." Hermann draws in a deep breath, the smell of the soap Newt uses. "Go west, as far west as we can get. The coast. California. I don't know. Just keep going, until we want to stop. They can't keep us here. Nobody can keep us here." He's talking fast now, dizzy with possibility. "We could go to Seattle, we could go north to Canada."

"But how?" Newt asks, miserably, his voice muffled by Hermann's jacketfront. "There aren't any buses at this time of night. No taxis, we couldn't get to an airport, I don't have money for a flight anyways..."

"We're going to steal a car."

"We're going to  _what_?" 

"We're going to steal a car." He takes Newt by the shoulders and pushes him away, gently. Looks him in the eyes. "We are going to steal a car, and we're going to drive as far west, or south, or north as we can."

"Shit." Newt's smiling now, eyes very bright. "Shit, yeah, okay. Okay, yeah. Dude, I know how to drive, I know how to drive, stickshift and everything."

"Stickshift and everything," Hermann says, and kisses him quick and fast on the mouth.

* * *

They go out in the darkness, shivering with excitement and utter terror. Newt's got the keys in his hand, swearing under his breath that if all else fails they can hotwire the vehicle, and Hermann's telling him that that won't be necessary at all. The air is cold, invigorating. 

"Which car?" Hermann asks, and stands shivering on the sidewalk while Newt unlocks it. He does something with the driver's side door and the car alarm goes off, blaring up and down the street; Hermann's teeth are set on edge.

"It's fine, it's fine, John's at the library, I swear. Also, it's, like, mostly his fault for leaving his keys out." Newt jiggles the door and it opens. "Get in, quick."

Hermann eases himself into the cold, unfamiliar sedan. There are books and papers all over the backseat, strewn like they've been tossed. 

"Shit. Okay." Newt jams the key into the ignition. The engine rattles to life, slowly, coughing. A figure appears on the sidewalk, ghostly through the clouded windshield. Hermann clutches at Newt's arm.

"Roll down the window," Newt hisses. "Fuck, that's not...?" He peers sideways through the window while Hermann rolls it down, both of them staring at the campus police officer. 

"Hey, guys." The officer leans over. His jacket rides up, revealing an empty holster. "You know the campus is on lockdown, right?"

"Huh?" Hermann says, stupidly.

"Lockdown. The local police are involved, actually. Something to do with the. You know." He gestures. Hermann's heart drops through the floor. 

"Course. Yeah. We were actually just. Looking for. Something."

"Well, don't drive anywhere."

"No, sir." Newt mock-salutes. As soon as the officer is out of earshot and Hermann has cranked the window back up, he mutters 'fucking cops'. 

"What do we do?" Hermann tries to breathe deeply.

"I'll tell you what we do," Newt says, and floors it.

* * *

In the rearview mirror, Hermann can see the campus police officer take out his walkie-talkie.

He turns to Newt, all reflective glasses and wide eyes. 

"Drive faster."

* * *

They careen around a corner, go flying down an unfamiliar road. Newt is clearing the speed limit by at least twenty miles per hour; Hermann finds himself gripping the egde of his seat, heartbeat high and fast in his throat. 

"I think you're—" He's about to say  _breaking a few traffic laws_ but as Newt blows through another stop sign he hears the helicopter. 

" _Shit_." Newt hisses, and slams his foot on the acelerator. Hermann is thrown back in his seat, a shout of terror dying on his lips. They hurtle out of campu bounds, flying down a dark road lined with trees—some bare, some undergrowth. Hermann sees blurs of green and white, illuminated by headlights. The helicopter grows louder, to a roar, then it's swinging above the trees, throwing a white searchlight down.

Newt swerves.

"Newton!" Hermann cries, as they nearly drive off the road. "Look out!"

"Uh, dude?" 

"Newt,  _careful_ —" But Newt isn't paying attention, is staring at the road with narrowed eyes, the car swerving dangerously.

"Uh, Hermann?"

" _What_?"

"You know how I told you I knew how to drive?"

" _Yes_."

Newt turns a despairing stare upon Hermann. 

"I have no idea how to drive."

* * *

And as soon as the words leave his lips they're flying off the road, running headlong into a ditch.

* * *

"Newt!"

"Dude!" 

* * *

"Fuck me." Newt pushes himself upright. Hermann swipes at his brow, feels blood. He looks at his fingers and they're red.

"Am I cut?"

"Shit. Yeah." Newt swallows visibly. The helicopter growls lower, louder in the sky. Dark trees press around the front of the car.

"At least we are unharmed."

"At least we're—dude, we're gonna go to  _jail_." Newt sucks in a deep breath. "Run for it?"

Hermann moves to open the door, but it's yanked open for him. And he's hauled out, violently, his seatbelt unbuckled by unseen hands, and there are voices everywhere and police running and he and Newt are on the ground, side by side with their hands clasped above their heads and one of the cops is calling for backup.

Shit, indeed.

* * *

__| 

_(1)_  
  
---|---  
  
_always returns to 1 for_[positive](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Positive.html) . (If [negative](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Negative.html) numbers are included, there are four known cycles (excluding the trivial 0 cycle): (4, 2, 1), ( , ), (, , , , ), and (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ).)

* * *

 _  
_There's a blur of a car ride.

Newt beside him, in handcuffs. 

Metal digging into his wrists. He hadn't thought he'd be this scared.

They're going to find out.

He wonders what kind of university degree you can get in prison.

Probably something. Not much but something.

Or would they—

—hang him?

They don't still hang people. I don't  _think_ they hang people. Oh, God. Hanging. 

No. No. Prison.

Prison means—

—don'tthinkaboutthatdon'tthinkaboutthatdon'tthinkaboutthat.

* * *

A metal chair.

Mirrored wall.

Alone.

He's seen enough crime shows to know where this is going.

* * *

They pull Newt in a couple hours later.

Big-boned cop: "we aren't getting anything out of this one."

Hermann trying not to smile.

They sit side by side at a metal table. Detective in a brown suit entering.

* * *

The detective mangles Hermann's surname.

Hermann stumbles through a few questions.

"Where were you, then. The night of the attack?"

"I—out—I—the lab—"

Newt is grim and silent beside him.

"I can't understand you, Mister Gott-libe. I'm informed that you're here on a student visa. Maybe your English skills are..."

"Hey, asshole!" Newt thrashes against the handcuffs. "His English is fine."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me." Newt pulls a punk-ass smirk in the detective's direction. If Hermann's hands weren't bound he would've lashed out good and hard at Newt, maybe cuffed his ear, slapped him.  _God_. The detective drops a file-folder on the table.

"Okay. So, you two are...friends?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"Something like that." A long stare. Judgement. "I hope that you're both aware of the consequences of what you've done."

"Thanks, Dad. I— _we_ —don't need, like, a lecture." Newt stares the detective down. Hermann could've killed him, honestly. He can see their reflections in the fly-spotted mirror: Newt smirking, Hermann unsmiling, sick with fright, both of them pale under the harsh lighting. 

"You're both facing a minimum of—"

The door opens.

* * *

"What the hell?" Newt hisses, as they're dragged out, man-handled down a long bright hallway. They're both filthy, Newt's lower lip split, only bleeding a little, Hermann's forehead bloodied. Dirty clothes, hair that's probably more animal than human by this point. Newt twists to stare at a passing cop. "What the hell, where are we being taken?"

"You're being released." One of the officers informs them, grimacing. Eyeing them both with measured distaste.

"Released? I thought we were going to prison!"

The officer shoves Newt through a doorway.

"We've been ordered to release you."

"By  _whom_?" Hermann croaks, finding his voice. The officer coughs bitterly.

"Someone higher up than me. The order came from the chief."

"But why?" Newt says, loudly. For a moment, Hermann fears that the officer will leer  _just kidding_ and haul them back into a detention room. Instead, he guides them through another doorway. 

"You must have a friend at the university." 

More officers descend—a whirl of dark uniforms and tidy hair—and remove Hermann's handcuffs. Hermann is aware of them being escorted to the front of the station, but in an instant they're alone on the dark concrete, the bright stationhouse behind them.

"What," Newt says softly, "the fuck. Was that. All about."

Hermann rubs at his wrists. They've been rubbed raw by the handcuffs. 

"I have no idea."

* * *

Of course, no sooner are the words out of his mouth than a dark sedan draws up to the curb.

Someone climbs out; a tall guy with blond hair going gray, a sharp suit jacket.

"Get in the car."

"Uh."

"Get in the goddamn car." A door is held open.

"Okay." Newt says, voice almost comically high-pitched. Hermann slides into the front seat, Newt claiming the back. As he's closing the door, Hermann begins to wonder if this all isn't some kind of deadly mistake, a mistake of the kind that gets you killed in a backwater ditch behind a Burger King at six o'clock in the morning. The kind that gets your face on the local—or, God forbid, national—news. 

They drive. Quickly, the lights of town blurring and then fading. They pass the campus sign, engraved on a flat slab of granite. Hermann sits on his hands. Newt is uncharacteristically silent. 

"Thank you," Hermann says, tentatively, more to get a conversation going than anything. Guilty people are silent. Innocent people talk. Express themselves. Show that they've got nothing to hide. "For, uh, liberating us."

"Not my doing." The man shakes his head. "If it was up to me, you'd still be in that jail cell."

"Are you Mr. Hansen?" Newt asks, sudden and loud, close to Hermann's ear. "And we weren't actually in a jail cell."

"Yes. And that's too bad. I would've liked to see you two playing harmonicas in jumpsuits."

"Hansen?" Hermann says. "Like Chuck Hansen?"

"No relation. That kid's a pain in my ass, though. To be honest. Although that's strictly off the record."

"What record?" They say, in unison. Mr. Hansen rolls his eyes.

"Wait." Hermann says. "Where are you taking us?"

He isn't familiar with this part of campus—in fact, isn't even sure that they're still  _on_ campus. They pass a tall, gloomy stone building. Lots of trees. It's dark, and he doesn't recognize the landscape. 

"Can you just let us out? Like, thanks for springing us, and everything, but we can walk from here." Newt tries the door handle. "Um, Hermann. Dude? It's locked. Yeah, uh, we're kind of locked in? Could you unlock the door?"

"The dorms are nearby," Hermann says, although he isn't sure if that's true. "We are perfectly fine with walking."

"Uh, yeah, just, like, unlock the door? And maybe stop? Please? Um, please stop the car sir dude what the hell can you just stop the damn car please—"

"No."

Hermann twists in the passenger seat, gives Newt a single despairing glance. 

_Shit._

* * *

_  
_Just as Hermann is considering trying to break the passenger-side window and make a run for it (although he wouldn't get far with his leg, and wouldn't get ten feet, probably, without Newt), they stop.

Mr. Hansen pulls into a parking lot, they all climb out. It's freezing, and dark, and there are stone bulidings (Victorian influence, this looks familiar...), but Hermann isn't sure exactly where they are. He's certain it's on campus somewhere. 

"Where the hell are we?" Newt sticks close to Hermann, peering around. Dark parking lot, dark trees...

They enter a gloomy lobby, go up some stairs. Everything is dim and shuttered, but Hermann sees computer monitors, an office. So they're in some kind of—

"In here." Mr. Hansen ushers them into a spacious office, poorly-lit by a single old-fashioned lamp. Bookshelves on the walls, orante lighting fixtures. A man, standing with his back to them. Newt makes a low sound of discontent.

"Sit." The man does not turn. His voice is deep. There's a power there, an authority; he's accustomed to giving orders.

They sit.

Newt shoots Hermann a singularly terrified look. The man turns.

"Mister _Pentecost_?"

Stacker Pentecost, college President.

Hermann blanches.

Pentecost pulls out his desk chair and sits heavily. He steeples his fingers and stares at Newt and Hermann across the top. They stare back at him: filthy, petrified, unblinking.

"For two whiz kids," Pentecost says, "you two sure are some fucking idiots."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this far, dears. Your responses—be it a comment, bookmark or kudos—are so, so, so, so (and so forth) appreciated. Really, you all rock. 
> 
> Happy holidays if you celebrate, and if not, a joyful, healthy and happy wintertime!


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

 

X.

* * *

"Please don't, like, kill us," Newt says, and at the same time Hermann blurts,

"Please don't expell us!"

President Pentecost looks at them steadily for a long, long time. Hermann's left eye twitches, a nervous habit that he's never had until  _just now_. He can hear Newt breathing too loudly.

"I'm not going to  _kill_ anyone." A pause. "Tonight." Another pause. "That was a joke, you're allowed to laugh."

"Heh," Hermann says, weakly. Newt forces out a loud fake guffaw. "Ha, ha, ha, HA!"

"Okay, stop." President Pentecost furrows his eyebrows. "That was actually a little weird." He lifts a pitcher on his desk, pours water into two glasses. "Thirsty?"

"Yes," Hermann says, and at the same time Newt says, "no."

"Newton, please go wait outside." Pentecost hands Hermann a glass. It's heavy, the water frosty.

"Why? Because I wasn't thirsty?"

"Uh, no. Because I need to speak with Hermann about something." 

And Hermann is so, so glad that Pentecost is calling them by their first names and offering them water and trying to make this feel a little less terrifying, and cracking jokes that don't really put them at ease but probably could, in the right situation. 

"Fine," Newt says, rising. "But if you, like,  _do anything_ to him, I'm gonna..."

"Threats are not necessary, Newton," Pentecost says, soothingly Hermann thinks. Newt sort of slaps Hermann's shoulder as he passes him. Hermann is distantly aware of the door being opened from the outside, Newt saying  _not you again_ and Mr. Hansen's laugh booming up around the doorway. President Pentecost folds his hands on top of the desk. When he looks at Hermann, his gaze is unreadable.

Hermann speaks into the silence, "Thank you, sir. Again. I cannot thank you enough."

President Pentecost nods slowly. "I must say, Hermann, that I've been following your case since you arrived at this university. You and Newton both, in fact." He leans back in his chair, the wood creaking. "Two brilliant students—I don't like using the term 'prodigies', but I'm sure you've heard that one before. You could've enrolled at Harvard, Yale, Stanford. Hell, UC Berkeley, U of Chicago. The nation's best research schools, and you go with the liberal arts."

"I wanted a place to distinguish myself."

President Pentecost pauses again. Seems to be thinking through his words carefully. "Imagine my surprise when I heard that two of my top students have been taken into police custody."

Hermann knots his hands up in his lap. 

"I'm sure that you and Mr. Newton out there have felt the shock-waves of losing a faculty member, the same way that I have," Pentecost continues, "and I'm sure that you've felt the same confusion and anguish that I have. And I'm sure that you two had a perfectly  _good_ reason for leaving campus  _during a police-ordered lockdown_."

Hermann swallows too loudly. "Yes, sir."

Pentecost doesn't shout. He barely raises his voice.

"I'm angry, and I'm disappointed. But I phoned the police station and my call bought you your freedom."

"Why, sir?"

Pentecost scoffs quietly. "The chief owes me a couple of favors. Decided to cash in on one, for once."

"Oh," Hermann says, softly. And then, because he's worried that if this chance slips away he won't get to ask again: "Why did you, sir? Why did you...?"

President Pentecost looks at Hermann, and his dark gaze is impassible. "Because I believe that you're an innocent man, Hermann Gottlieb."

Silence.

"Are you?"

Hermann looks Pentecost in the eye. Orange jumpsuit, plexiglass window, long-distance call to Germany, justice, scrubbing blood off his hands, doing the right thing, doing the right thing, doing the right—

"Yes, sir. I am an innocent man."

Pentecost stands. He cracks his back and neck (Hermann only cringing a little) and smiles, extends a hand.

"Glad to have have this little chat, Hermann."

"Thank you, sir." 

They shake hands; Pentecost's palm is cool and dry. He holds Hermann's gaze until Hermann turns away under the pretense of coughing into his crooked elbow. He's afraid that if Pentecost looks at him for too long, he'll see something in Hermann's eyes. The truth, maybe. 

The door opens again, and Newt comes in, tailed by Mr. Hansen. 

"You done?" Mr. Hansen asks. 

"Affirmative," Pentecost says. "Please show these two out. Give them a ride back to their dorms."

"We don't live in dorms," Newt says. 

"That's alright," Pentecost claps Newt's shoulder; a gesture of what looks like friendship, something mixed with authority. "Wherever you need to go, Mr. Hansen will drive you."

"Did anyone tell you that you're, like, extremely cool?"

"So I've been informed," Pentecost smiles, a wide white smile that makes Hermann feel, momentarily, like everything is alright, going to be alright, is  _cool_. 

Then Mr. Hansen is shuttling them downstairs and into the frigid car, and playing a blues station too loudly as they drive through dark, windy streets. Newt, having leapt into the front seat, gives directions to his place. They pull up and Hermann and Newt extract themselves, shivering and thanking Mr. Hansen profusely. He speeds away, probably breaking a couple of speed laws, but Hermann and Newt aren't exactly in any position to judge. 

They hurry upstairs, mostly to get out of the cold. The house is empty and chill. Newt cranks the heating system onto 'high', and all the vents set to creaking and moaning. Hermann takes a long, scalding shower, combs his hair into slicked-down perfection in front of the foggy mirror. He wears borrowed pajamas—flannel pants too short for him and a red  _WEST COAST_ sweatshirt even though he's fairly certain that Newt's never been further west than Philly and that was to speak at a biology symposium with his class. 

They hold up in Newt's bedroom, sitting on the bed, and Hermann tells himself that it's time to come clean.

This has been coming for a while; since the first time they fought, since Alderson was killed. Since  _he killed Alderson_. 

"Newton," he says, and ignores Newt's scoff at the use of his full name. "I have something to tell you."

"What?"

"You know that I killed Alderson."

"Scream it from the rooftops, why don't you!" Newt jumps to his feet, scrambling comically over the bed to slam the door and lock it. "Jesus, dude. Little louder next time."

"It's no secret between us," Hermann says softly. "What you do not know is why."

"Why what?"

"Why I killed him."

"Dude, don't even—shit happens when you transform. You're not in control. You think I haven't roughed people up? I have." Newt stands up and starts clearing junk from his bedside table; soda cans, an empty plastic bottle, wrappers. "It's like you're another person. Like, don't even. Know what I mean?"

"I believe that I. That I. Uh." Hermann realizes that his hands are twisted together, knuckles pale. His throat feels all sticky and awful. "I believe that I was, on some level, aware of why I was killing him."

Newt sweeps the rubbish into a trashcan and shoves it under his desk. "Hermann, don't..."

"You've heard the rumors, I'm sure."

"About...?"

"Alderson."

"No, I haven't." Newt pushes his glasses up higher onto his nose, pulls them off. Polishes them on his shirt in quick, jerky motions. "And I think you should probably, like, stop talking now."

Hermann sucks in a deep breath. The room spins around him. He can't. He can't  _not tell Newt_. He's swept this under the rug for far too long, forsaken sleep because all he can see is Alderson's body—or what he imagines it would have looked like—all he can see is a terrible future in which his guilt slowly consumes him. Eats him alive. Wolflike.

"The rumors that he had been sexually assaulting students."

"People say shit like that all the time, dude. I wouldn't believe it, really." 

"I would."

Newt freezes, bent double to pick a Coke can off the floor. He straightens slowly. "What." It isn't a question.

"Professor Alderson had attempted to coerce me into a sexual relationship with him."

Silence.

"He forced me into. Doing. Things. That I did not want to do. It went on for several months, actually. He was my thesis advisor."

Silence.

"I believe that part of my brain—the human part—was still active and alert enough during my transformation to seek revenge on Alderson." 

Newt gapes.

"I believe that  _that_ is why I killed Professor Alderson."

Newt's jaw snaps shut, twitches. He stares at Hermann, and Hermann stares at him.

"I'm going to leave now," Hermann says. The words fall out of his mouth slowly, he's barely aware of saying them. He gathers his clothes, goes downstairs and changes in a dark carpeted hallway that smells like cold air. Laces up his shoes, shrugs on his jacket. Pulls the hood up, opens the front door and walks out into the night. He half expects Newt to come after him, pleading him back inside the house, cajoling in that high-pitched scratchy voice, every sentence shot through with "like" and "you know" but Newt doesn't come downstairs. At the corner, Hermann turns and looks back. Newt's upstairs window is bare, the curtains pulled back, and his lamp is still blazing.

 _I thought you'd come after me._ The words are bright in Hermann's mind, like stars behind his eyes. He blinks and rubs at his forehead. It's too cold out, and he's insatiably lonely. 

He keeps walking, mechanically, until he reaches Vanessa's place.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Hermann says when she opens the door. "I'm so sorry, I know that it's late."

And then, without meaning to, without realizing how tight his throat had been, he's sobbing into her shoulder. His cheeks are hot with tears and he's crying so hard it's almost hysterical, the kind of crying you can't control, when you can only hiccup and gasp for air.

"Honey," Vanessa says, and strokes his hair. "Honey, come inside. It's cold out here."

She leads him into the living room. Two girls are studying on the floor, probably cramming for a test. Hermann sinks onto the couch beside Vanessa, still crying weakly, swiping at his cheeks with the back of his right hand.

"Are you okay, Hermann?" One of the girls—Staci, or Kaci?—asks, closing her book. Hermann shakes his head, a jerky motion; then, feeling stupid, he nods.

"I will be alright," he says, aware of how pitiful he sounds. The girls rise, gather their books.

"Let us know if you need anything," Staci/Kaci says, addressing Vanessa. She nods. The light is dim. She holds Hermann's hand, gently, her dark skin warm against his. 

"What happened, Hermann?"

He looks up at her, vision blurred with tears and he wishes that he could tell her, he wishes that he could tell  _so so so much but look what happened with Newt, this is what happens when you open up to people._

"It's nothing," and his voice hitches with the tears. "Nothing."

"You can't keep it inside." Vanessa pets his hair. "Honey, you're shaking. Do you want some tea? Or some beer? Or both?"

"Tea is alright." Hermann sniffs, miserably wiping his nose. He already feels ashamed for crying like this in front of Vanessa, breaking down and burdening her with his stupid petty emotions. 

Vanessa gets up and vanishes into the kitchen, and after taking some deep breaths Hermann rises and follows her. He feels weak and shaky, sits down at the wooden table while she fixes two cups of Earl Grey. 

"It's unhealthy to bottle up emotion. I'm glad that you feel safe enough to express it around me."

"I'm not some  _robot_ ," Hermann mutters, burying his face in his hands. "I just don't run around weeping all the time."

"Well, neither do I. Neither do most people." Vanessa laughs softly. "I'm just glad that you felt like you could come here." The water begins to hiss in the kettle. "So, what is it?"

"Nothing." Too quick.

"Hermann..."

He nods. Once, twice. 

"I made a mistake. A personal mistake. I trusted someone who I should not have, and they ended up being. Different. Than I thought they would be. Reacting differently to a situation that I made the mistake of telling them about." He's sucking in deep breaths of warm air, the faint smell of a scented candle. "It's happened to everyone, though, hasn't it? Telling someone about something and they react horribly wrong?"

"Of course, Hermann." Vanessa tips boiling water over the teabags. "It's happened to everyone. Sometimes more than once."

"I know." Hermann sheepishly accepts a mug. Wraps his hands around the warm ceramic. It feels grounding, to be in the bright warm kitchen with tea-steam drifting up and clouding his glasses. "I know. Perhaps I've been too..."

But he can't finish the sentence.  _Too shuttered. Too sheltered. Too scared?_ There wasn't a conclusion to that thought that wasn't dreary or upsetting or make him want to run back to Newt's place and shake an apology out of him, force Newt to sit down on the bed and listen to every damn word that Hermann needed to say.

"Is this about a relationship thing?" Vanessa says, and Hermann flinches.

"No," he blurts. "Not at all. Not a relationship. I haven't had...not since...well, that was..."

"What?"

He gulps scalding tea, gasps as it burns his throat. "No, no. Not a relationship." But his lip is quivering and his throat feels tight again. "A. Friend. Thing, really. That's it. A friend. More than a—someone I was very close to."

"Hermann, Hermann." Vanessa covers his hands with her own. "It's okay. I won't press you."

And she doesn't, bless her, she doesn't. She sits with him until it's nearly two o'clock in the morning, and he falls asleep on the couch and wakes up in the morning covered with a quilt and the kitchen bustling with sorority girls. They're making breakfast, and a short girl with buzzed hair offers Hermann eggs, and a little band of girls ushers him into the kitchen. There's tea and coffee and eggs and two girls are making toast for everyone, and Hermann sits and eats with three girls who have afternoon classes. The other 'sisters' leave quickly, bidding each other heartfelt goodbyes, which Hermann thinks is lovely, and he has a good conversation with the others about the college's applied mathematics program until Vanessa comes downstairs. He hugs her goodbye, and her lithe body feels good under his hands, warm and  _real_ , and when he walks home alone he is filled with the weird hopeful enthusiasm of starting again. 

* * *

XI.

* * *

_"You've been working so hard, Hermann." His mother came up behind him, put warm hands on his shoulders. "Your father and I are extremely impressed."_

_"Thank you." He didn't know what else to say. There'd been SAT studying for the past few days (easy stuff, he'd gotten straight 800s on all the maths sections) and reviewing for his English Fluency test. That, too, promised to be relatively simple. Some of the grammar sections tripped him up a little, but he found himself able to read lengthy passages in the language._

_That was the nice thing about math; it didn't change with the country you were in, or the language you spoke. It was always the same. Always nice and consistant._

_"It's your cousin's birthday tomorrow. You'll come with us."_

_Hermann looked up. He'd been studying for so long he'd half forgotten about Elisa; they lived on the other side of the city, in a cramped miserable flat that always smelled like boiled meat._

_"Alright. If I've got the time."_

_"You work yourself too hard." His mother turned to his father. "He works himself too damn hard."_

_His father smiled, a stiff half-smile. "The boy's clever."_

_"Smarter than me, you know," his mother said as they left. She closed the door behind her gently. Hermann stared down at his next word problem and tried not to smile._

* * *

_  
_Days fade into weeks, and weeks into uncertain months.

Hermann sees Newt less and less; there are thesi to work on, tests to run in the lab until the small hours of the morning. Weekends to sleep in until nine o'clock (he won't let himself sleep in later, because it seems a ridiculous waste of time). 

Full moons wax and wane. Hermann tries new routines until one sticks. He'll take the bus out to the last stop, or the train to the last station, to the edge of civilization where the houses thin out. Then he walks. When he can't see the lights of towns or suburbs, he'll set his duffel bag down. The transformations are brutal. Hermann prays often, though he's unsure of who—or what—he's praying to. The words die, familiar, on his lips.

When it's done and he wakes up naked and shivering on cold leaves or dirt or frost, he'll put on jeans and two jackets and walk to the nearest gas station, rest stop, public bathroom. There's a lot of changing clothes under harsh lights and washing dirt and blood off his face and hands and forearms in sinks. Waiting for people to leave so they don't see the water swirl red around the drain. 

He runs into Newt around campus a couple of times—it's bound to happen. The library, once, but blessedly they're not supposed to talk loudly (which pretty much bans Newt from saying anything in there, ever), another time at the Student Center, both haggling over a schedule change. 

They never look each other in the eyes. Hermann is afraid of what clarity he might find there.

In the early spring Vanessa cajoles him into attending a party at a house near campus, and he goes. He doesn't expect to see Newt there, because Newt doesn't go to parties, because that's not who Newt  _is_.

A pretty girl sidles up to him and while she's talking she keeps adjusting her shirt, she's got big breasts pushed up in a black bra and they dance a little and when she says  _let's go upstairs_ Hermann agrees because  _this is what you're supposed to do_. And he follows her up the stairs and is close behind her when she pushes open a bedroom door and flinches back and giggles  _sorry_ and Hermann looks over her shoulder—

—and Newt is standing there with his pants unbuttoned and there's a girl with her hand in his underwear and Hermann feels sick, lurches away and locks himself in the bathroom for the rest of the night, until Vanessa is ready to go because he can't stand to tell her why he wants to leave early.

At home later that night, he cries and is ashamed of himself. The next day he sees Newt walking in town. They're headed towards each other on the sidewalk, a collision course. Hermann swerves right, into a store, because he can't even  _look at Newt_ _._ Pretends to read a book but he feels sick, empty.

It's a stupid, cheap book. Something about a pop singer, about marriage, or a broken heart. 

"Are you gonna buy that?" The girl behind the counter chews spearmint gum. 

"No." Hermann shoves it back onto the bargain shelf. Only when he's reshelved the novel does he realize that he's ducked into the bookstore where he and Newt met for the first time.

The girl flicks on the radio. An old song comes on, something slow and lonely; the Beatles, Hermann realizes. Songs that Newt sometimes played when they were lying on their backs on his bed, just listening. Sometimes he skipped them because they weren't hard or fast enough, but Hermann liked them.

 _...think about them—in my life, I've loved you more_ —

He laughs. Hollow, void of feeling, he feels sick with something he can't name. 

He goes out onto the sidewalk and walks towards campus, not looking back. 

 

 

 

 


End file.
